Burma’s burgeoning massage and café industries considered in tandem.
Coffee and massage in Burma
Isham Cook
American essayist and novelist based in China since 1994. Writing philosophy: downmarket, big concept, provocative, discriminating, outrageous. Ballard, Beckett, Borges, Dick, Kafka, Hesse, Melville, Mishima, Sade are influences.
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“Money is just money. But sexual companionship is priceless.”
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A Taipei masseuse’s rare combination of expert technique and open-mindedness makes for the most intense of massages.
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Hypnotic video of cargo ship passing down the Yangtze River in Wuhan at night.
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The jostling voices and fraught sexual ambivalence of Anglo-Americans writing about China.
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The Chinese art of noise
Putting a song on repeat is as logical to the Chinese as decorating the walls of a room with the same wallpaper.
ISHAM COOK 