EP 71 Ian Rowen

Episode 71 with Ian Rowen is out now! Meet Ian Rowen, a long-term Burning Man volunteer and regional contact who played a pivotal role in introducing the event’s culture to Taiwan and China. Rowan details his trajectory from a "newbie" volunteer in 2001 to navigating the complex geopolitical and cultural translation required to establish regional burns like Dragon Burn in mainland China. He highlights the friction between the event’s decommodified ideals and the reality of corporate interests, specifically describing how Chinese venture capitalists and government-backed entities have attempted to brand and monetize the experience. The conversation explores how Burning Man has evolved into a globalized phenomenon, influencing social movements in East Asia while grappling with the diverse ways different cultures interpret and mirror its core principles.

@melonianian

https://ianrowen.com/

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Transcript

Before we start, I would like to ask your help to do two things. First, tell a friend or two who you think might like the show. And second, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The more reviews the show gets, the more likely it will even appear in search results. Thank you, and now on to the show. 

They make the trek out to Burning Man for a week and a day. After a lot of work, oh, there's a lot of play. Party party drama drama drama b**** b**** b****. Year after year, they come back to scratch that itch. They all say their lives have been changed. After many years, lives have been rearranged. That changes what this show is all about. You'll see the impact. of burning up and out. So sit back, relax, and cancel all your plans. These are the stories about the shadow of the man. 

Hello and welcome to the Shadow of the Man Show. I'm your host, Andy. No, not him. That Andy. Today our guest is Ian Rowan. Welcome.

Thank you. Yeah. So Ian, you were the Taiwan regional contact. Oh, you're not still, right? Are you Did you Did you kind of get the the Taiwan regional started many many many years ago?

So I was appointed I was appointed regional contact sometime in 2003 or four

for Taiwan

and then I moved to China in early 2006, but I was still in and out of Taiwan a lot. So I became the China regional contact in early '06. So I was both Taiwan and China. which led to some some funny discussions about how to represent Taiwan in China on the uh on the regionals page. And then what happened by 2013 or 14 I also became a meta regional contact and so I had a triple portfolio of Taiwan, China and Meta until 2017 when I moved to Singapore and I uh by that time Taiwan and China had regional contacts in place.

Ah I've stayed on as a meta regional and an alumnist for Taiwan and China.

Oh, okay. Well, let's uh we'll go back. So, so

so how did it all begin? Like what was your first year going to Burning Man and like and what what what got you to go to Burning Man?

Um I'd first seen in the '9s in high school uh a Kacophony Society Zen in Los Angeles. Uh and I thought, "Oh, that's looks kind of cool. I can't go. I'm like 14. And then I saw the Wired magazine cover in '96 in Alaska when I was in high school there. I'm like, it's already on Wired. It's probably not cool anymore, but it looks kind of cool. And then by 2001, I had finished college in Santa Cruz, California, which is an hour south of San Francisco. It's in that orbit. And I'd had some friends who' uh made some plans to go and they they uh pulled me along. I joined them for Lamp Lighters in ' 01. And uh I over volunteered that year. I I went and I volunteered at the man base. I went and greeted did all kinds of stuff that a first year burner shouldn't do. Uh and then kept going back uh pretty consistently after that. And by 03 I started evangelizing Burning Man in Taiwan. So I I was just looking over my records today. I think I might have published the first bilingual English and Chinese um article about Burning Man. Uh it was for a bilingual publication called Time for Students which went out to the greater greater Mandarin speaking world. And then Bio4.

Well, how did you uh So, so but 2001 you went to first went to Burning Man. All a sudden 2003 you're in Taiwan. Like how did you

No, I went so I moved I moved to Burning Man. Sorry. Yeah, I moved to Burning Man. Never left. But uh I moved to Taiwan right after the 01 burn. In fact, I was supposed to fly out on 911 and that that that was postponed. Um and I I I flew out nonetheless and I I was studying Mandarin intensively that year and uh went back to Playa in O2. Went back to Taiwan after that. Got work at that at that publisher. Uh stayed in Taiwan, did all kinds of crazy things that one can do as a Mandarin speaking foreigner. And I just kept going back to Burning Man, uh getting more and more involved doing the regionals thing as well.

Wow. So your first year you jumped it. I mean I mean ordinarily people like they go to Burning Man, they're like oh they wander around, they they see the sites, they kind of take it in. I mean like I mean how did you jump into volunteering so quickly? I mean, or is it

I don't think I would have chosen lamp lighters as my camp if that my friends hadn't hooked that up. You know, they said it's a big camp. There's nice amenities. Uh, and I went and indeed it's a big camp with nice amenities and a lot of lamps to clean and fill and cap and put on robes and I did that. Uh, and I thought, you know, that's that's interesting. You know, this is a factory not just for lighting the city, but also for fabricating volunteers. Uh, you know, turning tourists into burners. It's a social technology. I thought that's kind of interesting. Um, but uh, in the meantime, you know, before that I'm like, well, I that's cool, but I think I want to do some other stuff. I might as well go straight to the center. So, I thought I'd volunteer at Manbase, see see what the big deal was with that. And that was an unusual man base. I think it might have been the first time that it it was an exclusive man base. And we can we can talk about that. It was man not on hay bales. He's on a on a a temple of wisdom and you had to get all kinds of stamps if you want to go to the top. Not many people did that cuz it didn't work. It was very icious theme. Uh, and then what else? Yeah.

The one that had like the passport or something and you had to go.

Exactly. It was the seven ages. The seven ages of man modeled after the Shakespeare monologue. Uh, and as you like it, uh, you know, starting with all the world a stage. So, we roll into ply Thursday before event week in 2001 and the first sign is all the world's a stage. Uh, and then, you know, the rest of the monologue in between, you know, slow down 5 miles an hour. So, it's already setting a stage for all of us. And then the man uh you had to go through these various um stages and the uh various theme camps, art cars, and art projects were supposed to have stamps that would certify that you you pass through these stages. And most of them didn't get their stamps. You you know, things things don't work on time or at all. So, I found myself on Tuesday doing a shift and some old-timers came up and asked to go up to the the top. You know, they wanted to go see what the man base looked like and I refused. And I'm like, "Did you stamp your passport? and they're like, "Don't you know who I am? I built this thing last year." And I'm like, you know, I'm doing my duty. Uh cuz I I I took my role very seriously, which meant I was the only person that went up to the top that that whole shift, which, you know, shows you something about how authority works or doesn't work at Burning Man.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is kind of an odd position to be in like on the play to be like a gatekeeper, you know?

Yeah. For the man of all things,

you know, not not, you know, there's there's all kinds of of funny you know, boundaries and borders in this radically inclusive space. But for the man, you know, that was really quite something, especially for a newbie.

Yeah. I mean, I like I applaud the idea of like, you know, like some sort of adventure to get people to go out and to like, you know, experience bits of the city and this and that. But like, yeah, I don't know. Being a little too like rigid, you know, like it's like, no, you can't go up unless you have these like stickers, you know? Yeah,

I was just doing my my volunteer duty, you know.

Yeah.

But but but again like the way the way shifts the way the way volunteer roles work on playa, you know, some people take management very seriously. Uh I I I remember going back to play info and being, you know, I had to run all the way from deep ply. I' had quite a night, but I had a shift that started at, you know, at a certain time in the morning and I got there 10 minutes late and I was told, "You're late." It's like

if if you had known what I just came from to come volunteer. Uh yeah, sorry. Yeah,

really. Someone like admonished you.

Yeah, someone admonished me late on the

Yeah, 10 minutes late for uh Yeah, apply info shift,

you know. After that, I'm like, do I want to volunteer anymore? No, this is a friend. I don't want to cast dispersions. It's just like,

you know, people come and go with taking this stuff seriously and if they didn't take it seriously, things would fall apart and if they take it too seriously, things fall apart. So, you know, it's always finding always finding that kind of moving moving balance.

Yeah. I mean, I could see if someone like

had an important thing they had to go and do and they're waiting for you to show up in order to like really or something, you know, some sort of important thing, you know, but

yeah, I don't know. I mean, I I think sometimes people

they can take things like a little too ser serious. I'm not not that your specific situation, you know, but I just know in general like sometimes like

Yeah.

So, between between 01 and 03 I can't with kind of org camps or or org utilities, lamp lighters, greeters, got a sense of how these what you might call uh well city services, you know, how how that works, how it motivates people. If I4, I was volunteering in all of them in some way. And then also the volunteer whatever it's called like volunteer desk or whatever. So people who wanted to come up and help with things and be like, "Oh, go help with temple. I'll go help with this art cart." You know, there's a whiteboard.

People were putting their needs up.

Um by 05, 06, 07, 08, I thought I would join some some different themed camps and those were mostly on esplanade. So again, these are people taking what they're doing fairly seriously uh to to you know aim for that kind of real estate placement.

So I got to see more you know more more dimensions of um the energy expenditure

that that goes into this this scene.

What uh espalad camps were you at?

Uh so the first what was the first one? I it it was wild. It was an adult very adult themed casino. Um, how am I even the the I was brought there by a friend I'd made. Uh, the the predecessor to this camp was called Haven, Seven Ages of Haven. And the the the doctor DNA uh who Las Vegas based burner uh was um you know he he worked in casinos. So he was thinking about casinos, thinking about testing people. So there was various uh inhibitions that were to be tested at the first camp. And apparently I was the only person or so he said that that got all the badges. Again, badges being at their technology of of um uh influence and participation. And then the next year, how am I spacing on the name? It was a casino right on Esplanade. Uh we the first year there was the black hole if you if you won all the games. And then uh the second year it was carnival. That was the psyche year. It's going to come to me. I'm I'm even forgetting the name. The next two years after that was kind of a more newagy camp called Ascension Tribe, which had so-called Dowist or tantric massage. Uh it was fun to work the door for that. Um various uh liquid body, liquid mind, so kind of altered states. Um uh dance experience.

What else went on there? Rights of passage. You know, one can get anointed with various oils. Newagy interactive kind of newagy. Um beautiful beautiful dome again right at Esplanade.

Yeah. Well, it's just interesting like I don't know. I your your trajectory in like in the the Burning Man world, I mean, I guess was pretty much set like when you first set foot on the PL, you like like staying with like lamplighters.

I'm just about in a way, but moving you know, moving from the man base to Taiwan,

you know, and then and then, you know, going going back to um you know, volunteer in this this uh these wacky esplanad camps and then moving to China and then you know, like was my was my trajectory set? I don't know. You know, cuz later in the mid2010s, I started doing art that was, you know, as you know, because we collaborated on some of that. Um, uh, Taiwan, uh, and Taiwanese American, Chinese American effigy project, Enlightenment, 2014, the Taiwan Temple Market, 2015, the

Beetle Store and Fox Karn, you know, this kind of sweat shop and luxury luxury retail outlet again right at the manbase.

Uh, I I don't think any of that could be predicted by rolling into lamplighters in 2001. You know, all this is um, you know, multiple border crossings.

Yeah. So, you move to Taiwan in 2003. You you brought the British

2001.

Oh, 2001.

Taiwan.

Oh, but like so so was it 2003 or

I became a regional in 03 04. Yeah. There were there were no regionals in Asia at the time. Uh I raised my hand, you know, this is before there were 10 principles and the vetting at that time was also kind of okay. Yeah. You want to do that? Sure.

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah.

I remember like when I like uh raised my hand or was it 2002 or something? They were like, "Well, is there anyone else there?" And I think they I don't know was Andy Grace or someone was like, "What's you or these two other people?" And I was like,

honestly, I was just kind of like, "Whatever." Like I just I just want to like meet people and do thing or just see things happen, you know? And then a couple weeks later, whatever, they're like, "Well, you can't get a hold of the other two people, so I guess you're That was the vetting process. So yeah. So um how did uh it go like like translating Brady Man to to Taiwan into China? I mean like how did you get it off the ground? Like I mean it's taken some time but uh how'd you get it off the ground?

Yeah. In in the early 2000s there was almost no awareness of Burning Man in Taiwan or China. Uh you know I was I was busy trying to um trying to infiltrate various scenes. Some people got inspired by images here and there. You know, I was I was propagandizing with that magazine, for example, to high schoolers. Uh but then fire spinning was a big thing in the early 2000s till there was a safety incident. Uh someone managed to burn down a nightclub.

Um just just just this is not a burner thing. It's just someone spinning poi inside a a place that wasn't fires safe to begin with. Uh so that put that put a damper on that scene. Uh I moved to China in the mid 20 thousands there's some crazy art going on. I mean this is really a freewheeling time of uh nuvoish in China using art in crazy ways and so again I thought this is an interesting opportunity for a mashup. Uh I started working at an art hotel tried to bring some burner artists out to to to get involved with that. This is a 1200 acre uh property in South China with all these carsted peaks. If you ever look at Chinese brush paintings it's in one of the most famous scenic spots. I thought it be fun to put, you know, big flamethrowers and all these mountains do do art in the caves. But again, oh, I even played what was the best of I played a Burning Man documentary for the owner of the park who brought the local Communist Party secretary because I'd been again trying to pitch some some some um some collaboration and they watched the movie and and they walked out and they never talked to me about it again. You know, who who can blame them? This is 2006 in China. Uh I don't Yeah.

Take that. I mean, we're like, well, I mean, did did they take it? Well,

kind of confused.

Was too much. They were confused.

Well, obviously we were thrown out of the country.

Oh, no. I kept my job. You know, it's perfectly fine. Um, but you know, again, all this stuff is too early. Uh, and then I'm I start in 2004, 2005, I start holding a Chinese speaker tea party on So, so this started at the tea temple which was somewhere in inner play. It was a very beautiful very beautiful space. In fact, I think the founder of it might might have been a white Hawaii based John Oda. Beautiful, beautiful uh white white tent uh very nice wooden bar inside. So, they were perfectly happy with us. It was me and and then who someone very briefly who was a China contact, Katie Pro. Um we we held a tea party and then we kept it there and then I moved to the Shabbari tea house in the French Quarter and then uh this kept going you know so it went from you know eight people to 18 people it's an institution now it's been held for 20 plus years now the Chinese speakers tea party uh people have have um yeah made babies out of that so so that that helped kind of bring the community together in a way but in the meantime there's all these burners coming from China and Taiwan or also a lot of uh Taiwanese and Chinese Americans uh and Canadians coming more and more. By 2006, uh, I held a Burning Man film festival in Beijing with the help of now a Detroit-based burner, Carissa Welton. Uh, Iris Ye, who's now the head of the regional network. She was on her way to Beijing at that time. And a couple hundred people showed up. Uh, doing this film festival required a whole lot of work with subtitling. And that started really getting me to think about how to translate things like, well, the 10 principles, art, are how do you say pia you know uh how do you say the man you know all this all this stuff is not obvious uh it's not even obvious in English what words like radical or communal or immediiacy mean you know these things for many people need to be translated in English to English and thinking about this in English to Chinese English to Chinese as used in China versus Taiwan you know it's been an ongoing project uh by 2011 or 12 um a American who'd been a cacophinist uh Sven Arn Serrano. Uh he cha I think three times total. The last time was 96. So I think that's your first year.

Um so he he he walked into the Burning Man office and walked out a regional in 2000 uh the early 2010s which was interesting. Uh but but he he did the um he did the community the great service of holding some some bar nights and then some Shanghai based burners started coming together mostly expats uh and and started moving towards a dragon burn which was in 2014 the first regional event in in China. Around the same time I just moved back to Taiwan on a Fulbright fellowship. I was doing grad school uh in in Colorado Boulder and I I schemed to get back to Taiwan and um through another Fulbrighter started doing some work on a Taiwan burn. So these things all just kind of clicked in 2014. We had our first kind of proper events and by that time you know Burning Man had got enough notoriety in Taiwan and China that a lot of the kinds of people who would be interested in going uh were able to find out about it. Uh there was enough social networking and social media at the time that that we could start putting things together. At that time the maker movement was big in both Taiwan and China that was intersecting with Burning Man, various other scenes, TEDex or you know all the all these kinds of adjacent or um mutually parasitic sorts of um uh art and culture scenes were were were uh were dancing around uh that kind of helped grow these communities and in the meantime uh you know as has happened with Burning Man everywhere uh money capital uh celebrities started finding its way. So Chinese venture capitalists uh Chinese influencers and the like uh Chinese tech bros start showing up on Playa. Uh you start having by the 2010s uh theme camps uh concierge turnkey camps advertising themselves as the first Chinese blockchain camp on Playa. uh you start having 10 cent the the the company that that runs WeChat which is the the biggest social media app in China if not the world you know if you can imagine uh putting together all of the big social media apps in America uh plus payments you know you get something like WeChat uh they they send a team building group to play I go in I see they've made a map uh of the playa in Chinese including daft punk at the trash fence literally you know so so this all just starts getting very Interesting.

Wow. Wow.

Along the way along the way I'm I'm building I'm building art projects on Playa to help both stimulate this kind of um uh transnational collaboration and also reflect on it, you know, which is why one of those projects was a temple market and one of them was a a luxury lifestyle outlet and sweat shop.

You know, one one needs to start thinking about how everyone's getting their blinkies and all the other devices uh on Playa. You know, what is it that that that that uh we're doing and we rely on. Um so started thinking about um decommodifying uh the fetish or um what else? Uh thinking local, exploiting local. Uh we, you know, as a sweat shop, you know, we had our 10 principles at Fox Karn. So we didn't gift, we grifted.

Yeah.

Uh we made a whole poster. In fact, I tried to smuggle that poster into the org office. Um someone someone took it. She told me she's going to put it up on the wall. But I think it just disappeared into storage to my dismay.

Radical alienation instead of radical inclusion.

Yeah. No, I you you before this like um you'd sent me like some articles and stuff and like I Yeah, I read all of that and it was

Yeah, I think that was after my time like because I think my last year was like 2011 or something. So I had this gap between 11 and

Oh, you're wrong. Cuz you were there you were there for 2013 with the circle of regional effiges, right?

That was That was 2013.

No, I think that was 20 or maybe that was I think that was the I was there the first year of it.

Like which was like 2011 or 12 or something.

Yeah, you must be right

cuz I think you did cuz it only happened like twice I think. Right.

We did the enlightenment effigy um in 2013 and so there were 32 pieces not just in a ring around the man but they were like in individual rings in a big ring. around the man. So, we were in a little circle with like I think the Hawaiian wave I think from Maui and there's like an Israeli turning hand and uh a Dutch windmill. So, our meditating man on a lotus platform uh was in that in that circle. Yeah. We we burned last but brightest.

We didn't know what we were doing, you know. We we we were not pyro people.

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. I I think like so many things with Burning Man where it's just it the mantra is just kind of like bigger bigger bigger bigger then bust

right

yeah

but yeah I mean I don't know just the whole core thing I remember so the the first year I kind of kicked that off and and then that was basically like kind of my swan song so that was like the last thing that I did and only now all these years later I'm just kind of like oh yeah whatever whatever happened and then just hearing these stories about like oh yeah people spending like $50,000 like an effigy and I was like What? What? What now? Like, and like Dave X was like, you know, it's like this has got out of control. We can't do this anymore. And like it's like, wow, that that that really went crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah. But anyway, um something I was thinking about um well, especially I don't there's been conversations I guess publicly or social media, whatever, the past couple years about like like politics and Burning Man and and you know, there's different camps of different people. Some people say like, "Oh, politics doesn't belong on the playa." And other people are like, "Well, art by its nature is political, you know." So, so it's like I don't know if you could really remove like like like making a statement is essentially political, right? I mean, I I think what some people might refer to or or be talking about is like I think they don't want like like like partisan politics

like like at Burning Man. So, I just within the the context and frame of like American elector al politics is one thing, but but Chinese like like like like Communist Chinese Party like and and and Taiwan, you know, like those are I mean I always thought like those are some like very interesting currents that you know you you had to navigate and and just like I mean like like how do they let you do these things, you know?

So your your question is how do how do like the Chinese or Taiwanese governments let me do this stuff? Well, the Taiwanese how do I see But like but mainland China, you know, it's like

Yeah.

Like how does

I guess I'll I'll start with Taiwan and then I'll get to China. And one thing I'll say about Taiwan. Yeah. Is your is you're suggesting correctly, Taiwan is a much freer speech environment, a much freer place to to organize and assemble. It wasn't always that way. You know, Taiwan was was under martial law for 40 almost 40 years. Uh but I I started getting involved in Taiwanese politics actually. Um not not directly burning man related but Taiwanese democracy uh and other kind of social activist scenes and Burning Man experience helped me make sense of what was going on there spatially. So in 2014 I climbed a ladder and I joined an occupation of the Taiwanese Parliament.

So if you can imagine the US Congress being occupied for 24 days because Congress was about to do something illegal basically uh and and sell the country out um that that's what happened in Taiwan and I was I was the only foreigner uh to have joined that and At the time I was a grad student, a fullbrider uh and and a bit a bit uh I would say impulsive. Yeah. I mean climbing a ladder into parliament uh is is a bit nuts. Uh but but having worked as a cultural translator uh both professionally and and in a volunteer capacity, I I had a uh I had some resources to help. And having spent time at Black Rock City, I could see how the DIY approach to communications uh to cultural building uh to activism was was iterating so rapidly in this occupation and the surrounding streets of the parliament such that every day felt like another year on Playa in terms of sophistication, scale, technology. Every day of this occupation in Taiwan, it was like going back to Playa every year. You know, things just got more and more sophisticated and the stakes were much higher. Uh and and the same was true in Hong Kong. Months later, I went and I joined an occupation. I brought my tent actually from our first Burning Taiwan event. uh straight to the occupation of Hong Kong, the umbrella occupation, and again seeing how camps popped up, seeing how uh how things functioned uh on on a gift economy, you know, both both that Hong Kong and Taiwan movement, the sunflower movement, no one was getting paid for that stuff. You know, people people were busy uh gathering resources u um canvasing for everything from batteries to bathroom supplies uh to to better Wi-Fi routers so everyone could communicate all stuff was operating on gifts on on motivating people on fluffing on on burner technologies basically. Uh the so so it was very useful for me as an analyst and also activists to make sense of what was happening. So you know that's that's that's one example but I suppose a more direct answer to your question of how do we get away with stuff like this in places like Taiwan or China um for burns in China um like the ones that are sort of official official or attempting to be affiliated with burning And uh culturally, and here I'm not talking yet about the copycat burns, which we can move on to the the actually Chinese Communist Party supported burns. Um but actually no, like the burner burns. Um those in China have always flown as much under the radar as possible. So when I held a film festival in Beijing in 2006, I did my best to popularize it because it's just a film festival. Who cares? By the time it it was, you know, it was to do a an event in 2014, we kept it entirely word of mouth. Uh I was I was actually the only Chinese speaker on the organizing team. So you can see how colonial that first round was. But within a couple years more and more Chinese participants started coming. It got much better. By the third year there was a Chinese uh effigy builder and things just got much better integrated but still under the radar. So uh the event in China has always been under a thousand people to deal with local authorities. The first few years the organization such as it was partner partnered with a local tour operator that would handle things like insurance uh and some other logistics uh getting a very very small cut out of out of the very small box office. Uh and eventually the event grew to about 800 people uh and again all word of mouth. There's some local journalists you know both in English and Chinese language that dropped by who mostly wrote complimentary things like even China Daily which is basically an English language mouthpiece of the Communist Party um wrote a perfectly nice article uh about about the event. So, you know, that drew more and more interesting people. The the only problem that the event has had with the authorities was in 2018 2019 when a communist partybacked outfit that and we can talk about this in a bit uh but they they attempted to um do a joint venture with Burning Man. They wanted to have their own event uh like uh in fact they incorporated a company called Beijing, Black Rockck City Brand Management Corporation and they went around signing all these contracts with Chinese artists and uh they got backing from the Ministry of Culture at the national level uh and al or the central party level and then also like the China Capital Corporation which is like a finance vehicle of the party. They signed all these contracts. They then sent a YouTube video of a bunch of very bored office workers waving signs saying China welcomes Burning Man. They sent this to to uh the Burning Man email address. And so the org reached out to me and they said, "Ian, can you figure out what's going on?" So, uh, I talked to their their agent. They'd hired a Chinese agent in California to help negotiate this stuff. None of these people did their homework. They didn't realize that we had a dragon burn or regional contact or anything else like that. Um, and in the meantime, they started doing a lot of stuff um, sneakily, you know, like signing those contracts. So, I I went to China to figure out what was going on. Uh, where was it? I was in Singapore at the time working in as a professor and they brought me out and they took me to their gigantic warehouse where they were filming $200,000 worth of advertising for this event they were going to do in the GOI desert. They they basically did the reverse of what Burning Man did uh for its entire organizational history. So they started with the brand like they they wanted to show me the whole creation of of their event. So they started

kind of like the fire festival. It's like they started the brand selling the tickets and then we're like oh yeah need to like find a place to go.

There's that. But they they start with the brand. Like they started with the name. They start with with advertisements for their event before their event was secured. They they they were abusing their staff. Like they hired a bunch of a actors and they had this poor girl in a a tank of water freezing to death. Uh they hired a aging rocker to sing this horrible '8s style rock song. It was going to be the theme song for their event. They bought a bunch of uh they paid for a bunch of advertising at movie and they were going to have trailers for their event. It was wild. And then they tried to whine and dine me so so I would um I would join their scene uh in and support what they were up to.

So what

they they did they did a launch for for China's Burning Man and I had to kind of get out of the frame so as not to to to be seen with with this.

I'm just trying to imagine the point where you're just kind of like holding your finger and you're just like

trying to get to the point of like like like decommodification, you know, like I let me just explain that is something to you.

Oh, I think you just went uh you just muted yourself or something, right?

Oh, there you are. Okay.

Okay. Uh like they they they took the they they took the Black Rock City map and they adapted it so they could sell placement. So, Esplanade would cost more uh and and so on. Uh and they, you know, as kind of a corporate uh marketing opportunity, you know, in some ways there They're uh cutting to the chase, you know. It's It's not like Black Rock City doesn't kind of do that in some ways, too. They're just, you know, at this point. Um

Yeah. But this is like the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, like they're more capitalist than us. I'm like, what the hell?

This is a round this is a roundabout way in a long-winded way of answering your question. How do we get away with like the burn stuff in China? The only legal problems that the dragon burn had was the year that um these Gobi Heaven people were trying to do thing. And remember Go Be Heaven, the Chinese copycat burn, which is one of several actually. Um, we can go all through that, but they're the the most ambitious. They were backed by the national central level Ministry of Culture. So, so keep that in mind because uh, Dragon Burn happens in May. So, it's a couple months after like the the failure to bribe me to buy Burning Man as if I could sell Burning Man to them. Uh, so by May, uh, the The day before Dragon Burn uh opens, they get a visit from the provincial Ministry of Culture who's been tipped off that there may be uh activities that are against Chinese socialism taking place and they need to inspect. Uh and so it's a really good thing that the Dragon Burn leadership team and the local landlord who's Chinese landlord on this beautiful reservoir property. Uh it's kind of somewhere between a preserve and a park and private land with uh actually American uh next to a reservoir that is said to have been uh drunk by a very famous concubine a thousand years ago. So, you know, it's it's an enchanted place. The landlord liked our event. Uh he he enjoyed it. He would show it off to his friends. Uh he he would post about on social media till we told him to stop. Uh but he he he he was a he was very much a booster for it. And he said, "If anyone's doing anything wrong, arrest me first." So, he put himself in the line of fire. The the Chinese leadership by this time was very sophisticated. They they understood what they were doing on site and they also had been to Black Rock City enough and they took around these ministry people. They showed that no, I mean there's weird stuff happening. Uh but but there was nothing like what you would could remotely be called explicitly anti-communist party uh action at all happening. You know, it doesn't do that. These people um want to maintain their event. So the ministry said, "Okay, thanks." Uh and and slipped away and that was that. There have been issues since then like Dragon Burn this year has been um has been cancelled but not for political reasons. It's just uh securing the venue is difficult. Uh things got super difficult uh pandemic wise. Uh also China is just a harder place to do anything uh visible um unless it's real businessy. I mean that's a long conversation but uh plus the leadership has come and gone post pandemic. Uh a lot of people especially long-term expats in China left uh and that has led uh the the dragon burn scene. They have some some difficulties cohering, but you know, in general, there's there's all kinds of burner stuff going on between Shanghai, Beijing, Guano, and other places.

Wow.

In the meantime, Taiwan's gone through its own kind of um twists and turns with its communities, but there have been no political problems there.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's just amazing to me because like like in here in in Hawaii, like we One of the the hardest thing was trying to find a place to even hold an event. I mean, like for like a multi-day like kind of camp out kind of thing. And there's there's tons of places, but like the the various landlords you go to who own like large tracks of land, whether it's like either the federal government or the state government or the military or like Dole or like these large land owners or you know like Kamehameha schools or whatever and like

like no one is really interested you know. like, but it's Leave No Trace. It's like and it's like free money and we'll return it. We we'll keep the place pristine and we'll improve it or whatever. And so this one

last event that I was I was kind of dup here in Aahu. I was this land owned by by the Mormon church and uh we you know signed a lease and everything was all official and legit, but like the the night before like the gate was supposed to open like the Mormon church like we We went to YouTube and like we typed in Burning Man and we saw these videos and let me tell you we don't like this and so this event will not be happening like and I'm just imagining like this is happening like in here in the United States you know like I can only imagine like like anywhere else especially like the Chinese Communist Party you're like you're like oh what are we dealing with and then just just type the like typing in like a little burning man and just like start seeing these like videos and coming up. I mean I I can only imagine and you'll be like what like you want to do that like here.

So so by the 20 by the late 2010s in China um well it's complicated. So so Burning Man um has has been sort of visible and invisible as like a subculture or alternative culture that's potentially subversive but at the same time thanks to what's happened in global media uh including US media uh and also um China's uh really rapid uh tech industry rise. It also became known as a as a tech industry networking opportunity. So, as I'd mentioned, by the by 2015 or so, there was a Beijing based vanial capital venture capital firm uh which was a mix of Chinese and Chinese Americans uh who was sending people and even art to Playa by that time. Actually, the very first theme camp I I walked past in Black Rock City that was pretty much all Chinese people was um it was called the dying like the dragon dragon tea house is a very obscure Chinese character with three dragons in the character. I'd never even seen this word before. Most Chinese people don't even know this word. Um, and the head of that camp, uh, extremely charming, uh, was at that time the general manager for 10 cent, the the social media company I'm talking about, who went on to co-ound Lime Bikes, which you now see all over the world. So, you know, that kind of thing makes people in China think, okay, this is not just subversive and weird, but maybe it's also a good business uh networking opportunity. So, you know, why else would a communist party backed marketing firm attempt to to buy Burning Man or do a joint venture? So, this is also why the landlord at that reservoir started posting kind of proudly about having burners uh on his site because the world's elites, you know, burn Burning Man is the you know, the the place to be seen to see and be seen of the world elites and and so, you know, the world elites are descending on is reservoir property which is nonsense. You know the vast majority of Chinese burners are you know it's a mix but but it's it's um you know it's not the captains of industry that are that are converging there uh in a way that some of them do actually converge in Black Rock City. So it it became a marketing opportunity for that that landlord that we had to shut down

does that make sense?

Yeah.

You know we we wanted to keep the event there and the event was kept there but but uh but but can brag about this on social media was in no no one's interest.

Yeah. I mean, is has things continued going in this direction? I mean, it it seems like definitely there was an era of of Black Rockck City and Burning Man where like the payforplay camps, you know, uh like like the the tech bros, like the money coming in. But like I mean, do you do you see it just like it's just accelerated forward in time or do you think like since like 2019 or so like things have kind of like shifted and changed or maybe it's not quite as important anymore.

There have I mean there's been a huge rupture in the pandemic years and then in the last couple of years ticket sales have declined and there's a lot of um uh I think Burning Man's cultural currency at least in North America uh is valued very differently than it was in the 2010s uh for for better or worse. But when it comes to to plugandplay camps, I'll just give you an example. from the last month. So, I'm I'm living between Japan and Taiwan now. There's as I found out in the last few months because we held a zone trip in Taiwan in December uh on a private property next to a sand dune uh next it's really extraordinary landscape and we held this um kind of as a way to kind of re respark the community and again the landlord was so happy to have us there that he was also he felt like it was an honor. So again it's it's this is mostly good in the case of Taiwan um better than China uh for this. But we had a a Russian uh a Bali based Russian and I learned through him that Bali now has a unofficial regional event called Rampu with about 500 people and it took place uh a few weeks ago in mid-March in Bali in Indonesia and 95% of the 500 burners there uh based on other friends of who went are Russian. So they for their their burn, which if you go on the website islamu.org, you know, they they post the 10 principles there as the principles of their event. They say they're inspired by burning man. There there's, you know, as a regional contact, you know, we we often pay attention to IP issues. They don't seem to be violating any IP. There's nothing worth reporting. They're not claiming to be an official event. They follow this. Great. Cool. You know, it's nice that people are doing this. Uh what's interesting, um they they seem to hire Balines labor to build most of their camps. and arts. And so I was, for example, um offered the opportunity to buy all the food for a so-called Tantric Temples uh kitchen uh and that would wave the $500 fee for joining their theme camp in Bali for like 3 or 4 days. I had a conversation with the camp lead. I'm like, I'm not sure how I feel about this. And she sent me a PDF of a $1,000 a person camp to be on Ply. this year and that's not including the RVs that you mandatorily have to rent. So, so this is all again a long-winded way of saying um the plug-andplay or turnkey culture I think has I don't say metastasized I think that's um maybe a little bit uh porative or pamical but has diversified uh and you now have a really uh much broader transnational uh uh economy um for for for the uh I don't want to say commodification but for certainly for the uh management of labor and resources such that there's all kinds of stuff that one would have to really dig in the weeds and also have some multilingual capacity to even wrap their head around uh as to what's going on to connect Black Rock City to a Russian uh a Russian immigrate village uh in Bali. You know, this is wild.

Yeah.

You know, let alone you know, let alone what's going on between Dubai and Black Rockck City or India in Black Rock City. Now there's a now there's a small regional in India. You know, all this stuff is absolutely fascinating. Uh and you know, how how are burners in these places supposed to get to play without either having pre-existing contacts who want to, you know, take it seriously about doing it right or something? Or do they want to pay money to to have an easier experience? In the in the case of China, you have a wide variety of package tours available for you as a as a as a Chinese burner. Uh, and back when tickets sold out, having access to tickets was was one of the selling points of these camps. But then there's various degrees of of RV luxury, uh, things that come with gifts, things that come with hotties for you to run. I mean, this is stuff that was pioneered in the Bay, uh, but but has just, uh, uh, taken on a Chinese flare and maybe some innovative aspects when it comes to to to marketing.

That was super interesting.

I mean, I could see the the the upsides, the downside, the pros and the cons of like all these different things. I mean like definitely like in the the years of like scarcity when it was like hard to get a ticket you then it's like for better or worse it's like a ticket to Britman was a commodity you know that would go to

but still it still is you know it's not it's it's a less it's a less scarce commodity you know by any definition of commodity it's a commodity this is this is not to

again this is not pjorative it's just you know something you buy and sell something you buy it. It has a use value. It has an exchange value.

Oh, of course.

It's a commodity. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not like it was like when it was like $65, you know, you paid that

whether it's $10 or $1,000, it's a commodity all the same.

Oh, yeah.

It's just valued differently, right?

Yeah. But then the other point, um, cuz I remember like when I was running the regional here in Hawaii and like we had a a theme camp like on the Playa and just this whole idea of like trying to get people to come from like farther and farther away. Okay. Like coming from San Francisco not as big a deal as like coming from like the East Coast or Canada or or or from the opposite side of an ocean, you know? And so like I mean on the one hand you could look at it's like oh that's kind of plug and play. But the other hand you could be like well no you're trying to facilitate and like help people who like you know it's like you can only as I know from direct experience it's like you can only carry so much on a plane.

Yeah. It's it's complicated. And then you know there's some some really wonderful people that helped to make this happen. So the the the parents of Dragon Burn uh around the same time started a camp called Spice and Vice which was uh and still is. It's now the home of the Chinese speakers tea party for the last 10 or so years and has been a home for some of the projects I mentioned. But it was founded by these Shanghai based expats who had lived in Bahrain and they wanted to have a Bedawin tea house to to make their Bahini friends feel comfortable. And in the meantime they become kind of a hub of of Chinese burner activity

and so they they rent storage in know they have this camp and it it really kind of helps acculturate and train uh newbies from around the world. It's become very cosmopolitan. So the the Chinese RC Elaine, you know, she had her first taste of playa at that camp. You know, this these these kinds of people who are internationally uh and and like ussavvy can help bridge the stuff in a way that is is less plug-and-play like uh and and can give people another sense. And also to the the regional network uh and Bernie manorg's credit They've gone out of their way to make tickets available even during the scarcity years to make tickets available for uh people uh in in more difficult regions. So you know when when you have a scarce commodity like tickets people win people lose uh and some people determine you know how that happens. Uh I will I will express gratitude as someone who spent most of their adult life abroad and has been involved in some way in mediating burner means that the org has has been really uh proactive about about enhancing ticket access uh to to my regions and and I think probably regions all over the world.

Mhm. And I have to say it totally shows. I mean like after a 13-year absence and coming back in 24 and 25, I mean people keep asking me like what are the biggest differences? I'm like other than like almost nobody smoke cigarettes anymore. I mean for me it's just just walking around and just just hearing like different languages and seeing people from like different places. is and and also I I I was I started this new was part of this the pod this show I was doing my my shadow shorts where you I challenge people like in 5 minutes or less to explain like Brandy man's like impact or influence on you and I mean I it was just random samplings of people and it was like the first person was from like New Zealand and then from England and then from Russia and then you know from like I mean the people are just like from all over the place. It's like it's it's very different than is like, "Oh, yeah, everyone's from San Francisco," like it was back like in the '90s.

I'm super happy about this, you know, and when people when people complain about how things have changed. Yeah, things have changed. Um, there's a lot of things I miss about the early 2000s. Uh, I really felt like I was somewhere else. Uh, there really weren't smartphones. Like, we really didn't know what was going on elsewhere. Like, we really weren't getting photographed and shared immediately. Um, I didn't get carded as a 21-year-old. I now get carded as a 40-some year old. Uh, this this kind of thing uh drives me nuts. But at the same time as you just said, you know, to to walk down your block and it's like you're walking down the street in Queens or something. It's not quite as, you know, it's not quite as diverse as Queens. Um, but at least you're in a global city now and not not just like the Hamptons of San Francisco.

Mhm.

You know, this is this is this is this is wonderful.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, let's see. We got I think we got to get to our second question now. Your So, your background pre- Burning Man back. So, where where did you grow up?

I was born in Alaska and I grew up half in Alaska, half in Los Angeles. I went back and forth. I had a parent in each. So, back forth, back forth.

Went to college in Santa Cruz, California. And then uh did a year in Hong Kong uh 99 to 2000. And then pretty much my whole adult life has been in Asia except for grad school in Boulder, Colorado.

So, is that what you what what degree did you get in college? I mean, was

in college I did the first year I wanted to do philosophy and physics. That led me to do math, which was beautiful. And then I'm like, well, I want to talk to people. You know, the more math I do, the less people I can talk to. I think I should learn Mandarin. And you know, a lot and I want to learn how to read Chinese because it's beautiful and there's a lot of wonderful classic literature. Um, so, uh, I I ended up doing a math and East Asian Chinese double degree and then went to Taiwan to improve my Mandarin and then did all kinds of crazy work in Taiwan and China. I was um journalist, musician, did tour guiding in China for a year, worked at this art hotel, volunteered at film festivals. Uh and then started a travel company in the Philippines for a year in 2009. That was that was a whole adventure. Uh and then uh I'm like I think I want to just somehow figure out a way to get paid to just learn again. I missed that. So I I got I got fellowships and I got to grad school in geography and I didn't even know geography was a discipline when I went to college. I asked a professor I stayed in touch with uh I was I was like 25 and I'm like I think at some point I want to go to grad school but every week I'm interested in something new uh what's a good discipline for a dilotant and he uh he thought for a minute and he said you should do geography it's a good Marxist discipline so I didn't know that geography was a discipline and I didn't know it was Marxist that you know that was that was his concern more more than more than anyone else's. Um, but yeah, geography seemed right. You know, as long as you can make it about space, what's not about space? You know, where where do we not have space? Black Rock City is a wonderful place to think about space. What's the relation between uh, you know, why how did me being in Lamplighters lead to me being in our seat? How did me being volunteering at the man base, how did that make me see the city differently? How did moving to Taiwan make me see Black Rock City differently? All this stuff is spatial. Uh, I I had worked as a tour guide and so I started thinking about tourism as a political practice. My my interests tend to be cultural and political. So I I ended up going back to Taiwan and China uh doing a PhD in geography uh doing doing field work by occupying parliament, occupying uh occupying streets in Hong Kong um uh in major democracy protests, but also researching how Taiwanese and Chinese people perceived or misperceived each other. So I joined of Taiwan with Chinese tourists to try and figure out where these people thought they were. Did they think they were in Taiwan? Do they think they were in China? Do they think Taiwan was China? Uh I, you know, it was interesting. You know, it's a very liinal kind of place. So, I ended up writing a book about that. I ended up becoming a professor of geography in Singapore. I passed through anthropology, then I did geography, and then I was a sociology professor and urban planning. And then uh and then I was a Taiwan culture professor in Taiwan. And now I'm a professor of nothing in particular in Japan at a thing called the Institute for Advanced Study. So, that's kind of my my professional path. Along the way, I've written some things um done some art things. The next thing I'm writing is a book on Burning Man. It's underway now. It's it's in stealth mode, so I won't tell you what it's called, but it's it's not meant for an academic audience. It's meant for me for everyone.

Oh. Um you can't can you tell us about any I mean, you don't have to tell us the title, but uh I mean, what's

I'll just say it's Burning Man. I'll just say it's about Burning Man in the global economy.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, I I just thought it was fascinating that like the Chinese Communist Party took a very like kind of like they saw Burning Man, they they saw the images and this and that and they took like a very just kind of capitalist like kind of picture of it, you know? I mean, you know, but I mean, I guess it's like almost like a jewel of the different facets like when people kind of see it from like different angles, you know. I guess they can kind of see maybe what they want to see like in you know.

Yeah. I mean we we all do, right? The ply is a gigantic mirror, right? Uh

we all we all see what we want to see out there. If we if we go back to the founding mythology of the zone trip, you know, zone is kind of what you bring to it

psychically, psychologically. When it comes to China at the one of the the most telling parts of the the the marketing launch for the GOI heaven so-c calledled China's Burning Man event. I mean, really like professional marketers are coming to launch this event and calling party officials and whoever else to come. Uh there there's brand experts saying trying to come up with their formulation. There's like Burning Man is about getting lost. Go be heaven is about getting found. You know, one of them says this, but another person who had been um like in the military in China who seemed to have a really profound transformational experience on Playa uh and he started a camp called the the no-name camp like in Chinese it's no name uh and he started selling selling fairly expensive spots in his camp but I think both as a business but also I think he really felt like a sense of mission

uh he he's there to give his his kind of testimony you know using using a religious term his testimony about about his burn and he says he thinks that that Burning Man is more communist than contemporary China and he's not wrong you know this this was just this was just hilarious to here at this event where so many different interests are circling. So indeed people see what they want to see and do what they want to do which I suppose is what the scene is all about in a way.

Yeah.

And then it's you know become Chinese in that way is is really interesting.

Yeah. I mean I don't know I guess in just from a foreigners like you know view from that thousands and thousands of miles away like my limited understanding of you like the Chines Communist Party. Like I thought that there would be like many elements to Birdie Man that they would kind of

find objectionable.

Well, no, no, find familiar.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, other than the the capitalism,

the the the copycat knockoff people um who who registered Burning Man uh Beijing Burning Man Brand Management Company, they told me that they um they got a special kind of dispensation to promote Burning Man, which had been registered on some other list as like a some kind of bad or subversive thing alongside hip-hop or like metal or whatever. Uh and and so they they would basically have an exclusive right to Burning Man because they're the only people who could who could get it off the list of subversive stuff. I don't know. I I I think they were b*********** me. They they showed me they showed me some documents to to help support what they were saying. I I have the slightest idea. Uh, no one is privy to the lists of stuff uh, you know, what subcultures uh, with with what organizational affiliations are are cool or not. These things change all the time and they're they're different in different parts of China.

Um, so I don't know.

I don't know. I think you missed an opportunity. You should have just bought yourself a Stson and just been like, "That's right. You want Bernie man? Talk to me."

Well, they they flew me out. They flew me out and they You know, they they essentially tried to bribe me. They they kept me up and tortured me with booze until 4 in the morning. Asked me, "What is it that I want?" These are the same people, by the way, that sent a gigantic uh Mongolian warrior uh installation to playa in 2018 that uh that yo, it's not just that you saw a picture of that. That was the regional gift postcard that you probably got in the mail if you were still a regional at that time. It was that piece is is the same piece where where these these um these these these marketers uh and the artist um who had built this piece for an earlier knockoff event in China took a photo with the Chinese flag like the PRC flag in front and then used a fake Donald Trump tweet to promote their event. The same piece the same piece made its way and the same piece I'd written a long report for the Burning Man or about you know like what what these folks were up to. It was this same piece the same photo that made its way onto the uh the thank you postcard for which I received finally an apology you know having spent days of my life dealing with that only to receive it in my mailbox from an organization I was volunteering for. Um anyway, uh um yeah, it was it was those people. It's absolutely hilarious. It was a beautiful piece, you know, it was it was wellreceived on PA, you know, someone came up and gave them a little medal saying it's one of the best pieces they got on it was on PA, which they of course said, you know, they got some special award from from Burning Man. Everyone gets an award from Burning Man. I mean, it's just so funny.

Yeah, that's It was like play a pranks. I remember people talking about like, "Oh yeah, we're like, you know, I don't know if someone actually ever did this, but they were like, oh yeah, they were like giving out like like backstage passes."

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

And some people take that seriously.

Yeah.

I always wanted to do a camp where it's like we would give out like fake radios.

Yeah.

You know, cuz like so many people on the ply like, "Oh yeah, I don't just have one radio. I've got two." You know, it's kind of like as an ego thing. It's like, "Oh yeah, radio radio." You know,

you know, Speaking of that, and also some gray areas, like 20 years ago, there were some Taiwanese and Chinese art groups that wanted to come to Burning Man. I think they were sincere, but they were concerned about getting US visas to do this. And so, they wanted uh sponsorship. So, I asked people in the Burning Man art or regionals departments if they could help send a letter of support, which is not what they usually do, but they kindly did that. And then these people um some of them used it and some others didn't come at all, but they said, Burn. They were invited by Burning Man and this went onto their their kind of website accolades. Okay. You know, interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. So, how has Birdie Man uh impacted your your life or influenced your life?

Uh well, clearly I've never left. Um and also the the last couple of times I've tried leaving Black Rock City, some there's been some catastrophe. You know, the vehicle has broken down. uh there's a a rainstorm or whatever, uh I end up leaving days late uh returning to some academic event in a in a trail of dust. Uh I can't help but write academic articles on Burning Man and now I can't help but be focused right now on a book. So I'd say um yeah, it's it's made some some major impacts in in in terms of how I spend my time and the the the people I I consort with. uh it's transformed my relationship with my family. I started bringing my sisters out there three years after I started going and they they became regular participants as well. Uh and I think we got to know and understand and appreciate each other a lot more by hanging out uh in very very different premises. So, so that's been nice. Uh it also drives the rest of my family crazy, you know, to hear us all talk about this thing or, you know, get dust contamination everywhere. Uh it certainly as I mentioned changed the way I see space in society. You know every time I I find myself in a social movement uh or um any any space of mass gathering uh having having the lens of the playa uh adds some other kind of analytical um structure to to making sense of of what's going on. Uh and in turn you know thinking of the playa or of of Burning Man's global network as a as a space for for action uh via the lens of other social movements uh that I've I've participated in uh just makes all of that much richer.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean I don't know sometimes I like on social media see people like griping about this or that you know and sometimes people just kind of will treat Bernie man just like oh well it's just it's just a big party you know it's just it's a music festival or whatever you know and and I always kind of return with this like really Brady B's been going on for like a number of decades now. And there's some people who have been like going for 40 years, you know, people have dedicated more than half their lives. Like their entire lives to this, you know, it's like to Larry Harvey, it was like it was it's his legacy. It was his life, you know, and to so many people. It's like why would you do that, you know, like if it was just a party?

Yeah. My my response to stuff like that is basically um Yes. And you know, it's it's I I try not to negate it or argue. It's like Yeah. It's a big party. Yeah. It's stupid. Yeah. It's like Yeah. Yeah. And it's like a whole lot of other stuff, too.

I mean, it's not mutually exclusive. It's not like it was not,

you know. Yes. Yes. And to most things in life, be they be they burn or otherwise. Speaking of Larry, uh he came he and Marian came to Taiwan in 2015. We we held a Asia burner leadership summit then.

And uh it was it was his and I think maybe Marian too's first time in East Asia. Uh, and it it also affected the way they they at least Larry conceived of the play. Like he went back and he did the radical ritual theme in 2017, put the man inside a East Asian style temple. That was in particular drawing from Japan. Um, and and so I think his way of thinking about ritual and aesthetics uh was certainly influenced by that. And it was also a time that we were trying to consolidate translation of the 10 principles. So it was good to have Larry on hand to discuss how to do this. We u we had translated the subtitles for the film Spark, a Burning Man story, which was at that time the best available documentary on Burning Man. We screened it at a film festival in Taiwan. We pulled together a volunteer team to help with the translation and then to have Larry come uh to then just think about the word like the man, you know, we we don't want to gender him in in Chinese. Um but we also what do we do? So, we ended up just calling him the man in Chinese. Man is a familiar enough word for for most Taiwanese or Chinese people that we just kept them as the man uh to be um uh again as elusive about definition as possible. But when it comes to words like radical completely hopeless

really

completely hopeless in Chinese there there there's a there's a word that means uh well in English it's hopeless too. You know most people think radical in in the political sense of of extreme political uh uh positioning or something but in Larry's thinking radical was more like radics or root. uh getting to the root of things and you can see this in his writings when he's talking about what he means. There's a piece called I think it's spirit and soul but you can look elsewhere you know he's thinking radical in the sense of like uh you know the radical sign like the square root of two that's a radical sign it's the root more more than more than radical uh uh politics if you will uh so so the way you say that uh I mean it means different things in English and and then in Chinese how do you how do you translate that uh in a way. So there's a word that sounds more like absolutely, a word that sounds more like thoroughly, a word that sounds more like radical in the sense that most most Americans would misunderstand or not mandate but understand that word is as meaning something of a political veilance rather than something uh as the root. So all these things are super hard to do consistently in Chinese. Like Chinese is incredibly subtle language. There's a lot of a lot of things that it can do that English can't. Uh but if you want to be consistent with with um with words like uh radical inclusion, radical self-expression, etc., etc. Um radical self-reliance, the the word radical may be doing different work in these principles uh than in others. So, so to convey that in a way that is descriptive, which is the intent of these principles, they're never really meant to be prescriptive, but descriptive uh in ways that would be intelligible for for Chinese readers, uh is is um is challenging. And it's all the more challenging to even systematize that now for the best actually now that it's so radically decentralized.

Yeah.

You know, now that you've got you've got every Chinese burner or theme camp coming up with their own translations,

you know, and back in the day, uh especially as a professional translator, this stuff used to drive me crazy. Uh and now it's like great, you know, like uh DIY semiodics. I'm perfectly happy about it.

Wow. So, how do how are things currently standing in China now with the burning ban and regional? Is it the dragon burn? Like is that still

Oh, dragon burn is dragon burn is on hiatus. Uh they just sent out an announcement

uh at the end of March. Today's April Fool's Day, right? So, they sent this out two days ago on WeChat, which uh we were just discussing that the event uh is not happening this year.

That there's still going to be, you know, arts and community stuff happening that that week. It is the the golden week for China. the the Labor Day week of China as it is for most of the world except for the US uh the the May holidays because the US is not communist, right? Uh or socialist or any such thing. Um that would be subversive. Uh so so the last year or two the venue has also been a bit ky. So they've had a hard time securing exclusive use of that wonderful venue. And so there was something called an unburn that was held where you had uh in part of the venue just regular Chinese campers and then like in other around the venue there's like burners and the burners were doing their effigy thing or whatever else they're doing and then like the other campers would come like oh this what's going on can we join your barbecue or whatever.

So I I wasn't I wasn't at that. Um but apparently that happened for a year or two and this year it's just not happening at all.

So I wouldn't be surprised if there's some off the radar stuff going on that no one knows about. Um but I I'm in pretty regular touch with the Dragon Burn crew. uh which again as I'd mentioned post pandemic has gotten pretty pretty spread out. You know some some longtime Shanghai residents moved elsewhere. So so that's on hiatus. Um I expect there to be a whole lot of burners coming from China to Black Rock City uh as as has been happening except the last year in US China relations has been so so um

uh

so difficult that maybe not you know actually maybe numbers will be down this year. Um I know what's going on geopolitically.

Yeah.

Well, I know a lot of Canadians like

Yeah. And Europeans, a lot of Europeans are like they don't want to deal with having their their phones checked at the border or whatever other horrible things might happen to them. Uh US immigration and customs. So perhaps Chinese burners will also be staying away. I I guess we'll see when we get there. As far as Taiwan goes, there were various internal issues in the community that had nothing to do with geopolitics or whatever. It's just like some people getting along, some So, I'm not getting along, some venue changes and the like. Uh, and so to kind of bridge that and do something less ambitious, we held what we called a a zone trip in December and it was all of 50 people in an absolutely stunning venue. Uh, the only sand dunes in Taiwan. I mean, it really you felt like you were on a different planet uh facing the sea uh in a a very off the radar part of Taiwan um with a very enthusiastic host and We had people mostly coming from Taiwan, but also uh dragon burners. We had um Japan burners. Uh so yeah, it was it was wonderful. Uh I built a portal, some people built an effigy. Uh absolutely magical time, but uh a long weekend. Uh and we didn't call it a burn, but I wouldn't be surprised uh if it will have achieved um its goal of sparking some other recurring event because that site again is great. The the landlord's great. Uh and there's a lot of people who are interested in pushing things forward. But in terms of recurring annual events, China and Taiwan might might take a little more time to to renew that.

Mhm.

I went to Japan Burn now that I'm based in Japan professionally. Uh I went to Japan Burn for the first time last October. It was it was great fun. It was um 90 Well, I'd heard in the past it was almost entirely Japanese, which which makes it actually very different than than Dragon or or Turtleburn. So, Taiwan burn this year. Uh this last year, I don't know, I would say that it was maybe 80% Japanese and uh it was great. It was very centralized. You know, every theme camp was next to each other. There was some art, a little bit more spread out, a beautiful, beautiful, uh very sophisticated Phoenix effigy with wonderful lighting, uh wonderful pyrochnics, wonderful fire spinning. Uh just very, very civilized. Also, you know, the kinds of snarky, cheeky stuff you would expect from any burn. There was an naked camp. There was kind of a BDSM scene. There was uh whatever else, but also familyfriendly stuff and a space disco and a wedding. I mean, it was really it was really wonderful. So, it reminded me a bit of the sophistication of Dragon Burn in China. Uh that was achieved 5 years ago, but on a much smaller scale and a much smaller venue uh and has been going on continuously actually since I think 2014 2015.

Wow. So, the 20% where where were they from? Just like all they were mostly Japan based, mostly Japan based and mostly North American. And the the center of gravity for burning Japan is Tokyo. The event is a few hours into the mountains from Tokyo, but people came from all over Japan, from Okinawa, from for me, from Kyushu, from from elsewhere. Um,

I would say a lot of the people there weren't necessarily the most avid Japan burners on Playa, but they're like the most avid burning Japan people in Japan. But There is certainly some intercourse between those scenes.

Yeah,

it was great fun.

Yeah. Yeah. I' I'd love to love to go one of these days.

Cold. It was super cold and I was really grateful.

It's early October which you know Japan like in the mountains. I don't know. Think like northeast US kind of weather. You know, there's four seasons and in the mountains you got some elevation and it was just kind of foggy and miserable except for one day. But there's very nice sulfur hot springs within like a 20 30 minute drive. So that made that all the all the more doable.

Well, um I'll have to check it out one of these days. All right. Well, we're coming up in about hour and 15, which is usually time has fly.

Time flies. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful interview.

Thank you, Andy. It's great to see you.

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