History-inspired Jue Let cocktail bar replacing Blue Box at Pearl
The latest: Dobbertin, a 2025 James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef in Texas and owner of Best Quality Daughter, announced the project Thursday.
The bar is named after Jue Let, a China-born private cook for the Beard family.
What they're saying: Dobbertin, who is Chinese American, said she was "pleasantly surprised" to learn how deeply Beard was influenced by Chinese culture and cuisine.
"It was Jue Let who introduced young [James] Beard to Chinese cuisine, shaping his palate and trajectory as a culinary icon," she said in a statement.
What's next: San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato, which also designed Best Quality Daughter, will transform the former home of Blue Box — shuttered last year — into Jue Let.
Dobbertin is bringing along key Best Quality Daughter team members, including beverage director Lisa Forsythe and director of operations Daniel Perez, who will also continue as the restaurant's general manager.
While the menu and opening date haven't been announced, Jue Let will feature a small food menu alongside its cocktails.
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National Geographic
26 minutes ago
- National Geographic
What do your dreams reveal about you? It depends where you're from.
Lu Chin's mid-16th century painting entitled "Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly." Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of China's Hundred Schools of Thought. Photograph by CPA Media Pte Ltd/Alamy Stock Your dreamscape is the land where anything is possible. One minute you're walking through a beautiful meadow—and the next you're falling to your death over a cliffside. Your teeth may fall out for no apparent reason, or you may see a snake slither out the corner of your eye. The average adult spends roughly a third of their life asleep, which means there are plenty of opportunities for our minds to experience these personalized dreamscapes. But do dreams actually mean anything? That depends on who you ask. 'Anthropologists say that if you understand what a given group believes about dreaming, you have understood their whole [culture],' says Robin Sheriff, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Hampshire. Western psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung have popularized some of the most well-known ideas about dream interpretation, but these doesn't necessarily align with how experts in fields like anthropology and folklore understand dreams. Here's what you need to know about dream interpretation and how your culture may influence what a dream means to you. What is dream interpretation? Dream interpretation can be traced back to ancient Rome and ancient Egypt, but Sheriff says the practice likely has roots in prehistoric cultures without written records. Before dream science, also known as oneirology, was developed, dream interpretation was a cultural practice that could connect people to cultural ancestors or spirits. 'Dreams held deep significance in traditional Chinese culture…particularly within a supernatural worldview where ghosts, spirits, and ancestral souls were believed to actively participate in human affairs,' said Ze Hong, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Macau who has researched Chinese dream interpretation from an evolutionary perspective. Dreams were often regarded as meaningful channels of communication from the spiritual realm, capable of revealing hidden truths or predicting future events, Hong says. In ancient Rome, records show that dreams were seen as divine communications from the gods, and dream oracles played an important role in interpretation. Hong says this kind of practice also existed during China's Zhou Dynasty, which lasted between 1046 B.C. to 256 B.C. Hong explains that oneiromancy, the practice of divinatory dream interpretation, became widely used to provide insight into personal relationships, illness, and even political decisions. However, this practice has declined in popularity over Chinese history, said Hong, particularly by the end of the Imperial era in the early 1900s. The connection between dreams and the spiritual realm is something that anthropologist Roger Lohmann also found while studying the dreaming culture in Papua New Guinea. Though Westerners might view dreams as purely metaphorical, Lohmann, an associate professor of anthropology at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, says dreams in Papua New Guinea can be interpreted as a parallel journey that your soul went on while you slept. This meant that dreams could be interpreted as being prophetic or revealing hidden information, Lohmann said. He recalls sleeping in a village near the border of Indonesia and waking up from a nightmare about his research notes catching fire. (This is the story of the world's oldest nightmare.) 'I interpreted that [dream] as an expression of my anxiety about that something going wrong with my computer,' he said. '[But] I told the story to a man who was visiting me that morning and he said 'Oh, you better watch out. Be very careful with the fireplace,' because he interpreted that dream to mean something that's likely to happen in the future.' The guidelines for interpreting dreams in Western cultures today typically come from psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The father of psychoanalytic theory, Freud wrote in 1900 that dreams represent the dormant wishes of our subconscious and could be a way to carry out repressed instinctual, or even hypersexual, desires. Over the next six decades, psychologist Carl Jung proposed his own interpretation of dream theory that says dreams might be a conversation between our conscious and subconscious selves. Jung, who had a complex friendship with Freud, believed that instead of revealing repressed desires, our dreams are meant to process our waking problems and find potential solutions. (The brilliant women of psychiatry who were overshadowed by Freud and Jung.) Jung's dream theory also includes the idea of a collective subconscious, which suggests dreams can be interpreted in a symbolic way through distinct archetypes, such as the hero, the mother, and the trickster. According to Jung, these archetypes could be found across cultures and had universal meanings. However, this theory is quite different from what anthropologists have found when studying the importance of dreams and their meaning across cultural contexts. Interpreting dream symbols across cultures Depending on what culture you are dreaming in, common themes or symbols can have drastically different meanings. Take a snake, for example. In Western cultures familiar with Freud, dreaming of a snake may be interpreted as something potentially sexual, Lohmann suggested, or Jung himself wrote of snakes as representing power or danger, declaring that a 'state of instinctual hell is represented as a snake with three heads.' Hindu interpretations, however, suggest that dreaming of snake could foretell wealth and fertility—if you're eating it in the dream, at least. Hopi and Pueblo tribes in the American Southwest also link fertility to snake dreams, although particularly in relation to agricultural cycles and the fertility of land. On the other hand, Pentecostal Christian communities in Zambia may interpret that snake in your dreams as proof of the devil. There isn't a set interpretation of snakes in the traditional Chinese practice, said Hong—Chinese dream interpretations were more likely to be concerned with more culturally significant symbols such as dragons or suns, signs of divine favor. But some historical documents suggest that a pregnant women dreaming of snakes once would have predicted the birth of a son—or, contradictorily, also a daughter. Do dreams mean anything? A person will have countless dreams in their lifetime, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all dreams are equally important. By the end of the Imperial period, which was right around when Freud and Jung were forming their dream theory, Hong said that it became popular to view the origins of dreams as supernatural and related to a person's psychological state. 'For instance, dreams caused by 'overthinking during the day' were often dismissed as uninterpretable and meaningless,' he said. (You can learn to control your dreams with lucid dreaming. Here's how.) In the Western tradition, how much or how little a dream means is up to the person having or interpreting the dream. 'Dreams, like poetry and art, offer ways to think about human experience,' Sherrif said. 'There may be better or worse interpretations or analyses but we have no objective means of ascertaining their accuracy.'
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
Hint of Mini Labubu Launch Sends Pop Mart Stock Soaring 12%
The Chinese retailer Pop Mart's stock surged more than 12 percent on Wednesday, to the highest level since the company went public in 2020, after its chief executive, Wang Ning, said a mini version of its wildly popular Labubu dolls would be released as soon as this week. The toothy elves have become coveted accessories around the world, spotted dangling off designer handbags worth thousands of dollars and collected by the likes of Rihanna, Dua Lipa and Lisa, a member of the K-pop group Blackpink. The mini version will be able to be hung on mobile phones, Mr. Wang told investors on an earnings call. Previous new releases have sold out within minutes, crashed the company's website and app, and sparked hourslong lines outside of stores. Most of Pop Mart's revenue comes from China. But during the first six months of this year, revenue from the Americas jumped 1,142 percent from the previous year as Labubu enthusiasm took off around the world, the company reported on Tuesday. Sales in Asia outside of China were up 258 percent and from Europe and other regions, 729 percent. Source: FactSet By The New York Times The global craze for Labubus drove record revenue for Pop Mart during the first six months of the year, up more than 200 percent when measured in Chinese renminbi. Labubus accounted for more than a third of Pop Mart's total revenue over this period. Pop Mart's stock, which is traded in Hong Kong, has risen more than 650 percent over the past year. In China, the dolls have been praised as an example of how a local product can go viral worldwide. People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, described the phenomenon as 'a benchmark for China's pop culture making inroads overseas.' Onstage in London over the weekend, Lisa, who told Vanity Fair that Pop Mart toys were her 'secret obsession,' wore a custom hot pink Labubu during Blackpink's Deadline Tour. The doll's popularity has spawned a thriving resale market and a universe of knock offs, known as 'Lafufus,' that are almost as sought after as the real things. Consumer protection agencies in the United States and Britain recently issued urgent safety warnings that said the fakes could break into pieces and presented choking hazards to children. Pop Mart has also popularized another Chinese trend by releasing some Labubus in 'blind boxes,' so that buyers don't know which doll is inside. The company said it plans to open about three new stores per week for the rest of the year, and expects to top 60 stores in the United States.
Newsweek
3 hours ago
- Newsweek
Laufey Is an 'Anxious Cinderella' on New Album 'A Matter of Time'
"Dark sarcasm" isn't something that one would expect to hear in the jazz- and classical-influenced pop of Laufey. The 26-year-old Icelandic-Chinese musician is known for her romantic and dreamy tunes inspired by the Great American Songbook—a canon of classic pop songs, Broadway numbers and jazz standards from the first half of the 20th century, including works by such composers as George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hammerstein—and rendered with a Gen Z perspective. Yet several songs on her upcoming new record, A Matter of Time (August 22), take a more candid—and at times, sobering—tone that contrasts with her earlier material about growing up and being in love at a young age. Album announcement Album announcement Emma Summerton "I'm a very sarcastic person," Laufey (pronounced Lay-vay) tells Newsweek. "With the last album [2023's Bewitched], I showed the light, and I wanted to show a little bit of darkness on this album. I had a lot of fun doing it. It's kind of like an anxious Cinderella." A Matter of Time, Laufey's third studio record, marks another step in the career of the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter, whose story reads like a fairy tale come to life. Since her 2022 debut album, Everything I Know About Love, Laufey has played sold-out shows; performed with such artists as beabadoobee, Norah Jones, Barbra Streisand and Billy Joel; and won a Grammy Award in 2024 for her second record, Bewitched. Her music attracts nearly 19 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and her TikTok account has 8.7 million followers. Larger and Bolder Sound For A Matter of Time, Laufey says she wanted to make a work that sounded larger and bolder. "But at the core," she adds, "I didn't want to move too much away from my own sound. There's definitely more sonic exploration on the album, which was really important to me." Helping Laufey achieve that vision were her longtime producer Spencer Stewart and, for the first time, The National's Aaron Dessner, whose production credits include albums for Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams. "I've always wanted to work with Aaron," Laufey says. "I'm such a big fan of his and The National. I worked with Aaron [on] a session, and something felt really right about it. It brought a level of speed and shine to the album that I was looking for." An example of Laufey branching out stylistically for this record is the country-inspired track "Clean Air." "It's about letting go of something toxic from the past, whether it's a job, a relationship or a friend," she says. "It immediately landed in this dreamy country world. I love the harmonies of Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. I wanted to have that sound in some way, and it felt like it wasn't a far toss from my world." The song "Silver Lining," the first single released ahead of the new album, recalls early 1960s pop music; Laufey wrote it while she was at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. "I found this vintage electric guitar in a corner and was like, 'I want to write a '60s song with the fun strings and this mid-century vibe and reverbed-out kind of sound.' I wanted it to be a love song, but sarcastic. Icelanders are not good at saying things very directly. We find these side ways of saying it. And I think 'Silver Lining' was kind of my way to do that." Yet A Matter of Time isn't a drastic stylistic left turn from Laufey's first two albums—the lush and elegant arrangements and her sublime torchy singing voice remain the cores of her work, such as on the bossa-nova-styled "Lover Girl" and "Clockwork." But her perspectives about love and the world around her have matured. "It's definitely more bold as well," she says of the lyrics. "It's more honest. It's more raw. It was a fun challenge finding growth within myself." Snow White lead Snow White lead Emma Summerton The feisty "Tough Luck," which finds Laufey throwing shade at a rotten boyfriend, is a notable counterpoint to her usual romantic perspective. "I just wanted to write a mean song," she says. "I had this experience, and it was so funny to me. I was like, 'This is a song.'" On the lush and heartbreaking "Snow White," she critiques idealized beauty with the ironic lyric: "A woman's best currency is her body, not her brain." "I was frustrated with beauty standards and myself for needing to compete with those standards," she says. "Like, 'Why can't I just remove myself?' The lyrics are about how the world has kind of set us all up to need to fit into those standards to compete." "Sabotage" is the album's final and most dramatic track, featuring a dissonant-sounding coda that seems more appropriate for an indie rocker than a pop song; Laufey calls "Sabotage" the album's thesis statement. "It's about that contrast between this glass-like beauty and chaos. This album, for me, showcases the complexity of female emotion to the world. So often, we're good at putting up a beautiful front on the outside, but then there's a noise or mess going on inside, this anxiety. I wanted to find a way to use songwriting and music to describe that contrast." Although Los Angeles is her current home, Laufey pays homage to her Icelandic roots on the track "Forget-Me-Not," recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra; some of the lyrics were written in her native language. "It's a song about the experience of leaving your home country and feeling like you're losing it a little bit," she says. "This was my way of reaching back and reminding it that I love [Iceland] and pleading to 'not forget me.' And so the lyrics—at least in the chorus—had to be in Icelandic because I want to speak to its soul." Born Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir, she was introduced to classical music through her Chinese violinist mother, and her exposure to jazz-pop standards came courtesy of her Icelandic father's record collection. At a young age, she played both cello and piano. "I was like listening to orchestra rehearsals in my mother's womb," Laufey, who was raised in Reykjavík and Washington, D.C., says. "I was given a violin when I was 2. Classical music was what I've heard at home my whole life. But also, it was a lot of jazz music and the Beatles." Although she harbored the idea of becoming a singer in addition to being a musician, Laufey initially didn't think it was realistic for her to forge a career in the vintage music that she grew up with. "I didn't have any example of success from somebody who looked or sounded like me in current times. My favorite singers were from the '40s, '50s and '60s. So I just didn't believe it. I knew that music was always going to be a huge part of my life. I was just too scared to jump into it. Laufey later attended Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship, which was a turning point for her. "There were so many people writing around me, and it kind of empowered me to explore my sound and try things. So I started writing in a way that reflected my favorite music, which was songs from the Great American Songbook. I realized that if I wrote in that form but used modern experiences, it could create something that people would be interested in." Her breakthrough came when she wrote and released a single, "Street by Street," in 2020 that topped the Icelandic radio charts. Laufey's fame grew around this period when she started posting popular videos online of her performances of classic standards by jazz legends such as Ella Fitzgerald and Chet Baker, as well as her original compositions. Through AWAL, a record company that allows its artists to retain ownership of their work, she released her albums Everything I Know About Love and, a year later in 2023, Bewitched. 'A Generation of Mixture' Much has been written about Laufey's huge popularity with her Gen Z audiences, which is remarkable given that jazz and pop songs from the 1920s to the 1960s are generally a tough sell to mainstream youth. One major aspect of Laufey's appeal to her young fan base is that, underneath the music, her mostly autobiographical lyrics are relatable and contemporary. "I loved it [the Songbook sound] so much growing up.... It's very natural to me to advocate for that. I couldn't fake being a pop singer—this is just what I do. I'm so lucky that people are interested in it. I think it's because Gen Z is just so open to different styles of music. And with the amount of access we have to music from all different genres and decades, the palette of young listeners has really changed. "There are so many artists who have styles that don't fall into a certain box, but are applauded because we are a generation of mixture. So many of my fan base are mixed race like me or from different cultural backgrounds. I think that's a part of it." Laufeyperforms with Gustavo Dudamel & LA Phil at the Coachella Stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 19, 2025 in Indio, California. Laufeyperforms with Gustavo Dudamel & LA Phil at the Coachella Stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 19, 2025 in Indio, Coachella Laufey will be touring large arenas in support of the new album—further evidence of her growing popularity—including two nights at New York City's Madison Square Garden. Yet she has stayed mostly grounded through all of the attention. "I've been practicing that since I was so young," she says, "like the highs and lows of going on stage, playing a recital, coming back home and knowing that I still have to finish my homework the next day. My Chinese upbringing is, 'Stay humble and thankful and respect everyone around you.' That is something that I carry with me always." "I am in true shock over my career," she adds. "It's always surprising to me. It's very hard to have any sort of ego about it when I'm kind of curious as to how it even happened in the first place." Further Listening Everything I Know About Love [ARTWORK] Everything I Know About Love [ARTWORK] Emma Summerton Everything I Know About Love AWAL, 2022 If someone was listening to Laufey's 2022 debut album for the first time and did not know that its music consisted of mostly original material, they could've sworn she was interpreting classic Broadway and jazz-pop songs from the era of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Tony Bennett. That's a credit to how Laufey faithfully mines that era with letter-perfect precision and authenticity: from the melodies and lovelorn lyrics to Laufey's wistful and sultry voice. "It's about dealing with growing up," Laufey said of the album in a press release at the time. "It's also very 'hopeless romantic.' All the songs are based on my personal experiences in the past years, but the way I write about them is like fiction." Bewitched Cover Bewitched Cover Emma Summerton Bewitched AWAL, 2023 Laufey didn't experience the dreaded sophomore slump with Bewitched. Instead, it won a Grammy in 2024 under the best traditional pop vocal album category. In addition to containing the hugely popular "From the Start" and the title song, Bewitched features Laufey's cover of the Erroll Garner standard "Misty." "This is a love album," she said in a previous statement, "whether it be a love towards a friend or a lover or life. The first album also touched a lot on things like moving out of my childhood home and moving into a new city for the first time—being an adult. With this one, I've experienced a little bit more of that, and I'm writing about the magic in the love of being young."
