Chris Amico: Journalist

(click the image to see a three-part slide show)

Alameda hosted its 14th Relay for Life on Saturday and Sunday, with 400 people on 26 teams walking the track at Encinal High School for 24 hours.

The Alameda Relay’s goal was to raise $130,000 in the event to go toward research, education and support of local services, such as driving cancer patients to therapy.

The relay included the first lap dedicated to survivors, and a luminaria ceremony, with candles in sand lining the track to light the way for walkers through the night to dedicated to loved ones who have had cancer.

This year’s theme was “Celebrate, Remember, Fight back.”

“Survivors celebrate that they made it through the treatment. And of course they remember the friends they’ve lost. And we encourage everyone to fight back,” said Emilia Stephens, the Relay’s team captain coordinator. Read the rest of this entry »

Click the photo for a slide show

Biaggio Parma is “trying to hold a little bit of history that’s fast sliding away.” This jeep was a reconnaissance vehicle in Europe during the Second World War.

Parma served in the US Navy from 1957 to ‘61, working as an electrician aboard an aircraft carrier. Read the rest of this entry »

Slide show: Rick Gunn reflects on his 25,000-mile bike ride through a world we shouldn’t fear.
Three years ago, Rick Gunn rode his bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge in a heavy fog, pedaled down into San Francisco, took a ferry to Vallejo and turned east. From there, he crossed America, then Europe, Asia and Oceania in a 25,000-mile ride that ended Saturday back where the trip started.

At the end of this very long ride, Gunn has learned that the rest of the world is not something to fear. In detailed accounts of his travels posted online, there is an unfettered joy and unrelenting optimism in what Gunn sees. The journey has made Gunn, a former Castro Valley resident, a devout pacifist and left him with an abiding love for humanity.

The most dangerous place, Gunn says, is here at home in America. Read the rest of this entry »

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The tipping point in a country’s development is often marked by the moment its population goes from mostly rural to mostly urban.

China is supposed to hit that critical mass of city-dwellers in 2010, but economist Guo Shuqing, chairman of China Construction Bank and a delegate to the recent national party congress, says the nation is already well past that: He believes that currently 60 to 65 percent of Chinese live in cities, around 900 million people.

The Chinese government’s official number is 577 million, or 44 percent of the population, according to Xinhua. Guo recently told China Daily that his number comes from the World Bank’s definition of an urbanite, which counts anyone living in a city at least three months a year who is not a farmer or a migrant worker.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fithi Garza decided to tattoo his late brother’s name in Chinese on his arm. He did it in a back room in Dalian’s Nepalese Bar. There is, by my estimation, exactly one advantage to getting inked in the back of a Chinese laowai bar: the characters will probably be right.

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Four local photographers have work on display right now in Heping Guangchang. The exhibition, called “I love Dalian” (they didn’t get to choose the name) runs until Oct. 15, after which two of them will move to their own show. Details aren’t available for that one yet. Directions to the current show are at DalianDalian.com.

All four studied photography in Dalian over the past year, three completing masters degrees from Bolton U./Dalian Medical University. Much of what they photograph is the same, or follows similar themes: beaches, migrant workers, strange food, blue skies. Yet they see it very differently from each other.

Curious about their perspectives, I interviewed each one and built audio slide shows with their photos. The result is here.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Irish (and those aspiring to be so) invaded Dalian this weekend. The city hosted the All China Gaelic Games, a round-robin tournament of Irish football. Teams from Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen came to compete.

Shanghai took the men’s cup, with Dalian coming in second. Beijing won the women’s division, beating Shanghai in the finals.

For those who’ve never heard of Gaelic football, let alone played it, here’s an overview of how the game is played. Below, Joe Keating, a staffer at the Irish Embassy, explains the rules of the game:

I recommend using headphones if you have them. The wind was awful and I did what I could to fix the audio. If you can’t make it out, here’s what he’s saying:

Unlike soccer you can catch the ball in Gaelic Football. However, after four steps, you have to release it. That can be a bounce, or it can be a kick. It can only bounce once and then you must kick. However, as you’ll see in the game, you can kick to yourself, and the better players will continually kick to themselves. Others find it easier to bounce.

So, four steps then bounce or kick. Second four steps, you must kick, but can kick back to yourself.

At any time you can hand pass the ball to one of your teammates.

You eventually score either a goal or a point. The goal is equal to three points.

After that, it’s easy. Just hit the ball, kick the ball, over the bar, under the bar. What else can you say?

The game often gets described as a combination of soccer and basketball. To me it looks sort of like rugby, but since I don’t actually play any of these sports (tennis, anyone?) I’ll leave it to others to explain.

Here’s a tough job: Spend the next year traveling to every province in mainland China. Hang out with cool people. See everything you’ve ever wanted to see in this country. Blog about it.

David DeGeest and Lonnie B. Hodge (aka One Man Bandwidth) somehow landed this job. Theirs is the China Dream Blogue (like travelogue, get it?), and the project aims to raise money for two charities through ad revenue and help deserving people make good one their own best hopes. The pair stopped by Dalian last weekend, and I grabbed them for some barbecue and brought the video camera. Here’s how they explain the project:

The two charities directly involved are Tom Stader’s Library Project and the Reading Tub, run by Terry Dougherty.

Now, I’m a little skeptical of the amount of cash a blog can bring in. I know there are those that make heaps, but there are mountains more that don’t. So I gave Tom a buzz, and he’s optimistic. Even if it just brings his cause more attention, that can translate into money or volunteers or more opportunities. “I have had good luck with getting donations from blogs,” Tom said. “I received one US$300 donation from Lonnie’s previous blog.”

Three hundred dollars built Tom’s first two libraries. Both are in Dalian, and I watched each be hammered together by energetic volunteer teachers who were already thinking of ways to expand the project. Tom’s planning to be back in Dalian next month, so I’ll get a progress report then.

There are about 35 children who call Lin Jie “Grandma.” They all live under one roof, share rooms, run through the hallways in twos and threes and gather in doorways to poke their heads into Lin’s office—which looks somewhat like a small shrine to Chairman Mao—when newcomers arrive in their home.

It’s a peculiar sort of family, especially in a country entering its second generation of only children. There is talk of bright futures, and no mention of the past. For most who live in this orphanage, it’s the happiest, most normal, and possibly the only family they have ever known. Read the rest of this entry »

LITTLEROCK — Lancaster Mayor Henry Hearns apologized to the Antelope Valley and the Lancaster City Council on Wednesday for allowing a convicted child molester to help plan a youth sports camp at Jackie Robinson Park.

The camp is a church event sponsored by the Living Stone Cathedral of Worship, where Hearns serves as bishop.

Maurice Wyre will no longer work with the camp, which ends Friday, Hearns said at a press conference at the park. He was responding to an article published in Sunday’s Valley Press disclosing Wyre’s role in the camp. While Hearns spoke, about 50 children inside the park’s gym listened to a former Olympic athlete instruct them to work hard, persevere and live a balanced life. Read the rest of this entry »