New Chinese movie The Climbers (攀登者) in Pittsburgh, from September 30.

The new Chinese movie The Climbers (攀登者), starring Zhang Ziyi and Wu Jing, will open in Pittsburgh on September 30. A summary from the distributor:

Based on a true story from award winning director Daniel Lee (Three Kingdoms, 14 Blades), featuring China’s biggest stars Wu Jing (Wandering Earth, Wolf Warrior 2) and Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Grandmaster), and with a special guest appearance from superstar Jackie Chan. THE CLIMBERS is a cinematic retelling of the first Chinese climbers to summit Mount Everest - the first ever to do so from the North Ridge. Well-known as the most challenging side of the mountain, the perilous journey takes its toll on the mountaineers, physically and mentally, forcing them to make life or death decisions at every turn.

It plays at the AMC Loews Waterfront theater and tickets are available online. The theater is located at 300 West Waterfront Dr. in the Waterfront shopping complex in Homestead (map), across the Monongahela River from Greenfield, Squirrel Hill, and the rest of Pittsburgh.

2018 film Swing Kids (스윙키즈) at Pitt, September 30.

The University of Pittsburgh chapter of Liberty in North Korea and the Pitt Korean Student Association will present the 2018 Korean musical film Swing Kids (스윙키즈) on September 30.

Come join KSA and LiNK as we watch Swing Kids, a Korean musical drama film that focuses on a North Korean soldier (Rho Ki-Soo) and his fight for freedom. The theme will be SAUNA NIGHT - we'll be selling face masks and giving massages by the one and only, Phillip Lok, as well as cookies and drinks. BRING YOUR OWN RAMEN - we'll be supplying hot water.

It runs from 9:00 to 11:00 pm in 203 Lawrence Hall (map).

Wang Lu's "Manifold" with Yangjin, October 19.

Alia Musica will present a performance of Wang Lu's "Manifold" on October 19 in Oakland.

Alia Musica partners with Yangjin in a special event of music for the pipa and various ensembles.

The concert includes a 12-player chamber version of Wang Lu's "Manifold," commissioned and premiered at the Festival of Firsts in Downtown Pittsburgh in 2018.

Plus music by HouYuan Wu, Zhanhao He, Vittorio Monti, Xing Liu, Chang Liu, and Astor Piazzola's Libertango.

Tickets are currently available online for $10. The performance runs from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at Bellefield Hall in Oakland (map).

"We Are Here: Asian Pacific Islander American Artists in Pittsburgh" part of Gallery Crawl in Cultural District, September 27.

by Estelle Tian.

The exhibition "We Are Here: Asian Pacific Islander American Artists in Pittsburgh" at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council is part of this month's Gallery Crawl through the Cultural District on September 27.

Although Asian Pacific Islander Americans (APIA) have been present in Pittsburgh since the 1870s and represent an ever-growing community in the city and in the country at-large, APIA’s continue to struggle for representation. This exhibition aims to provide visibility for this community: for the first time in Pittsburgh’s history, every exhibiting artist in "We Are Here" identifies as APIA. While some of these artists create work directly informed by their race, family backgrounds, and sociopolitical history, all possess an identity created in the context of omission and discrimination.

By giving a physical space for viewers to look at and engage with these artists’ work, we hope to set a precedent for the local art scene, educate the larger public, develop dialogue, and voice that "We Are Here," we have been here, and we will continue to create.

All art will be for sale. The event is free but online RSVP is required. It runs from 5:30 to 8:00 pm on the 12th in the GPAC Big Room on the 7th floor of 810 Penn Ave. (map).

The Secret World of Arrietty (借りぐらしのアリエッティ) in Pittsburgh, September 29 and 30.

The 2010 Studio Ghibli film The Secret World of Arrietty (借りぐらしのアリエッティ) will play in Pittsburgh on September 29 and 30 as part of this year's GKIDS Ghibli Fest.

From the creators of Spirited Away and Ponyo, and Academy Award®-nominated director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, comes a gorgeous and adventure-filled adaptation of The Borrowers, one of the most beloved children’s books of all time.

In a secret world hidden beneath the floorboards, little people called Borrowers live out of sight of humans. But when brave and tiny Arrietty is out gathering supplies, she is discovered by Shawn, a human boy, and they begin to form a friendship that blossoms into an extraordinary adventure.

It plays at the AMC Loews Waterfront and the Cinemark theaters in McCandless, Monroeville, Robinson, and Pittsburgh Mills. The September 29 screenings are dubbed in English while the September 30 ones are in Japanese with English subtitles. Tickets are available online.

2017 Xu Bing film Dragonfly Eyes at Pitt, October 8.

The University of Pittsburgh's Department of History of Art and Architecture will present the Xu Bing film Dragonfly Eyes on October 8. The Museum of Modern Art summarized the film thus:

Few images come closer to reality than those recorded by surveillance cameras. In China, a country with strict film censorship, an estimated 200 million such cameras have been installed to capture life unfiltered; mundane daily activities are mixed with dramatic events beyond the realm of imagination. Visual artist Xu Bing’s first feature film stitches together surveillance footage collected from the Internet to create a fictional tale about a young woman traversing life in modern China. The result is a provocative tale as mundane, surreal, and outlandish as reality itself. Known for works that consistently disrupt our understanding of what we see—from Book from the Sky, an installation of books and scrolls with printed “fake” Chinese characters, to Phoenix, giant phoenix sculptures made of salvaged materials—Xu persistently explores the relationship between vision and meaning.

The film will begin with a reception and will follow with remarks from Pitt's Gao Minglu and NYU's Zhen Zhang. The evening starts at 4:30 pm---film begins at 5:00---at the Frick Fine Arts Building in Oakland (map) and is free and open to the public.

"Sonic and Visual Trajectories: Taiwan's Pop Music in Chinese-Speaking Asia," September 26 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will host Marc Moskowitz and his talk "Sonic and Visual Trajectories: Taiwan's Pop Music in Chinese-Speaking Asia" on September 26.

Taiwan's popular music has shaped China's music and culture to a surprising degree. The roots of Taiwan's music industry can be found in the 1930s Jazz era in Shanghai. Sixty years later, Taiwan was the hub of the Chinese-language pop music industry--a sonic movement that shaped CHinese understandings of music, gender, and individuality in the contemporary age. Today, music videos and mash-ups that are posted to YouTube (and its Chinese counterparts Youku and Tudou) demonstrate cultural proximity between China and Taiwan that reveals both shared cultural understandings and ongoing regional tensions that arise out of their distinctive pasts.

The talk starts at 5:00 pm in 144 Cathedral of Learning and is free and open to the public.

SAP Ariba hiring bilingual Mandarin-English Procurement Operations Specialist for overnight call center position.

SAP Ariba is hiring a bilingual Mandarin-English Procurement Operations Specialist for an overnight position in Pittsburgh.

ROLE DESCRIPTION:

The Customer Support Associate primary function is to effectively support Ariba applications for both internal and external customers. Support includes site navigation and system troubleshooting as well as interfacing with other Ariba teams to ensure world-class service. Assistants will provide complete satisfaction for all customer interactions.


EXPECTATIONS AND TASKS:

Responsibilities

• Provide inbound and outbound (phone, email, web form, chat, community) application/ functional support and resolution to customers (external and internal) while presenting the company in a positive and fair manner with timely updates and knowledgeable answers
• Collaborate, coordinate, and escalate on customer issues acting as a customer advocate while working with all departments
• Maintaining the quality of the customer support organization (release readiness, process definition, training, service audits…)
• Document transactions in CRM system
• Create content for knowledge base systems

Yoshino coming soon to Shadyside.

The new Japanese/Chinese restaurant coming to Walnut Street got a name this week: Yoshino. It is taking the place of China Palace, which closed in Shadyside after nearly 30 years in business. A handwritten sign on the door says both China Palace and Mt. Everest Sushi cuisine will be available.

Pitt Honors College presents The Farewell, September 27.

The University of Pittsburgh's Honors College will show The Farewell on September 27 as the next installment of its "Movies Everyone Should See" series. From the distributor:

In this funny, uplifting tale based on an actual lie, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there’s a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother’s wondrous spirit, and the ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken. With The Farewell, writer/director Lulu Wang has created a heartfelt celebration of both the way we perform family and the way we live it, masterfully interweaving a gently humorous depiction of the good lie in action with a richly moving story of how family can unite and strengthen us, often in spite of ourselves.

The movie starts at 6:30 pm on the 35th floor of the Cathedral of Learning and is open to the Pitt undergraduate community.