Enno Cheng & Chen Xian Jing

At a Rainy Night (would you walk me home?) [Mandopop/2019]

Off the record 👀

Hello, friends, Romans, and countrypeople! A warm welcome to Akash, Angela, Neema, Vrund, and a mysterious gentleman from the East Coast! Get some coffee, or masala chai, and settle in.

Back to the music! 👇🏻

This is one of the first songs I discovered when I started exploring the Mandarin popular music (Mandopop) scene. What caught my ear immediately was the spooky Halloween theme at the start. This video was shot in Taiwan.

The animation, the dancing, and the overall vibe made me stay.

Plus, it wouldn’t be a “What’s Curation?” newsletter without a bit of nostalgia, so I would note that we saw a Kodak Ektagraphic III A Projector at the start of the video. It used to hold 35mm slides and project color images on a screen.

Sadly, with the advent of digital cameras, which were later toppled by smartphones, the humble slide projector has receded into the sunset. Not ‘Ol Yeller style though.

From an article in the Boston Globe, in 2003:

With zero fanfare, Eastman Kodak Co., the principal US manufacturer of slide projectors, has told its important customers that it will cease production of its once-popular lines in June 2004. "The handwriting has been on the wall," said Merri-Lou McKeever, Kodak's product manager for slide projectors. "In the past three years, the decline has been very fast." Twenty years ago, Kodak sold almost 300,000 slide projectors; this year it will sell 18,000, she says.

See you all tomorrow,

Nikhil.