Chinese Audiences Will Not See Disney’s New Movie Starring Notorious Outlaw Winnie the Pooh
Christopher Robin, which is already in theaters in the U.S., is the second Disney movie to be rejected in China this year, following A Wrinkle in Time. Another source told THR that Christopher Robin ...
Slow Trains, Shrinking Boomtowns, and Men Who Know Ice
from Yuanjin PhotoIn this issue of Depth of Field, we take a ride on one of China’s slowest trains, meet the workers who cut the ice for Harbin’s winter festival, and follow two mentally disabled “sent-down youth” on a rare trip home to visit their families. Also...
David Tang, Fashion Retailer and Raconteur, Dies at 63
David Tang, the founder of Shanghai Tang, a global chain of flashy emporiums of Chinese-inspired clothing, accessories and home furnishings, and a prominent writer and raconteur in Hong Kong and Britain, died on Tuesday in London. He was 63.
China’s Congress Meeting Brings Crackdown on Critics
Chinese authorities have shut down activist Ye Haiyan’s blogs and forced her to move from one city to another. Left with few options, she now produces socially conscious paintings to make a living and advocate for the rights of sex workers and...
Ai Weiwei to West: Tackle China on Human Rights Whatever the Cost
‘It doesn’t matter it will hurt me or not – do what you think is right’: artist says Beijing has axed rule of law for anyone with contrary political views
Humanizing the China-Africa Relationship with Film
When independent filmmaker Carl Houston Mc Millan was growing up in the tiny southern African country of Lesotho, he saw firsthand the effects of China’s surging engagement in Africa. Even in this remote country, embedded within...
If Mao Had Been a Hermit
from New York Review of BooksAt the annual meeting of BookExpo America that was held in New York last May, to which most leading U.S. publishers sent representatives, state-sponsored Chinese publishers were named “guests of honor.” Commercially speaking, this...
Q. and A.: Jindong Cai on ‘Beethoven in China’
Jindong Cai, 59, is an orchestra conductor and a professor at Stanford University.
Xi Jinping on What’s Wrong with Contemporary Chinese Culture
from China Film InsiderAt the Beijing Forum on Literature and Art last October, President Xi Jinping spoke to a high-level audience of arts professionals about the role of arts and culture in China. The event, along with excerpts of the October 15, 2014...
Mao and Other Cultural Inspirations
“An army without culture is a dull-witted army,” Mao Zedong wrote, “and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.”
In ‘The Assassin,’ a Director Blends the Fantastical and the Realistic
The director has made a film rooted in martial arts, but with imagery and settings that make “The Assassin” feel almost painterly.
Jia Zhangke on Finding Freedom in China on Film
Jia Zhangke is among the most celebrated filmmakers China has ever produced—outside of China. His 2013 film, A Touch of Sin, a weaving-...
‘I Try to Talk Less’: A Conversation with Ai Weiwei and Liao Yiwu
from New York Review of BooksIn late July, Chinese authorities renewed travel privileges for conceptual artist and political activist Ai Weiwei, ending a five-year prohibition following his arrest in 2011. He promptly flew to Munich and then Berlin, where he has accepted a...
China: Through the Looking Glass
Orientalism is generally understood as a bad thing. What the “Through the Looking Glass” exhibit designers attempted to do was reclaim Orientalism, demonstrating that Western designers might only have a superficial understanding of China, but...
The Met Goes to China
In July, while in New York, I toured The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s much buzzed about “...
Chinese Art Curator Admits to Faking Masterpieces
A prestigious art institute in Guangzhou has discovered that it had forged artwork in its collection — faked by none other than one of its curators.
Leonard Bernstein and China
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to host Alexander Bernstein, son of Leonard Berstein and director of the Bernstein Family Foundation, who is now in China on part of a cultural tour. Accompanied by Alison Friedman of...
China Is Using ‘Charlie Hebdo’ to Justify Its Own Crackdown on Free Speech
“The world is diverse and there should be limits on press freedom,” read the editorial by Paris bureau chief Ying Qiang. “Unfettered and unprincipled satire, humiliation, and free speech are not acceptable.”
Drawing the News: Wo Shi Chali (Je Suis Charlie)
Chinese cartoonists and netizens have responded quickly to the slaying of cartoonists and editors at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo yesterday. Masked gunmen entered the offices of the journal and fired automatic weapons at staff in...
Beijing’s Art Scene Raises Its Profile
On a recent Sunday afternoon in the sunken terrace of Beijing’s sleek Opposite House Hotel, an art event was in full swing. The wine was chilling, the dumplings steaming and a few dozen locals and foreigners were looking on with curiosity as the...
‘A Map of Betrayal,’ by Ha Jin
Many years ago, the F.B.I. coined an acronym, MICE, to describe the motivations of the spy. This stands for Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego. All spies, it is argued, are drawn into espionage by some combination of these factors.
In Pictures: Designed in China
The Guo Shoujing Telescope, or Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, is named after the 13th Century Chinese astronomer and is aimed at bringing Chinese astronomy into the 21st Century.
Why China Chose a French-Directed Film as Its Oscar Submission
“It’s a mild, breezy, accessible, feel-good drama which really pictures China as a harmonious, wonderful place where conflicts of various stripes—across age, class or geographical divides—could easily be reconciled,” said Clarence Tsui, a film...
Zhou Xiaoping, Director of History
Since nationalistic blogger Zhou Xiaoping’s “positive energy” won accolades from Xi Jinping at the Beijing Forum on Literature in Art last week, he has been the subject of much netizen scrutiny, and some have taken him to task for his blatant...
Silent Spring on the Huangpu River
This past July, Shanghai’s Huangpu River—known for more than...
Contact Lenses
Will we all become “Chinese?” International New York Times correspondent Didi Kirsten Tatlow ironically asked recently. The question plays...
Artist at Center of Multimillion Dollar Forgery Scandal Turns Up in China
Pei-Shen Qian, acccused, along with two Spanish brokers, of conning New York art collectors, will likely escape extradition.
Ai Weiwei’s Reach Draws New Yorkers’ Attention to Free Speech
Ai Weiwei retweeted me!” exclaimed a young blonde woman, laughing and waving her iPhone in the air with excitement. She and some two hundred other New Yorkers had gathered on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army...
Giant Birds ‘Fly’ Inside St. John the Divine
Two giant birds Chinese artist Xu Bing created out of tools and debris are hanging inside The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights.
A New Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum Puts a Modern Face on Chinese Art
The art world has embraced the evolution of Western art, but when it comes to China, we seem stuck in the past. A new exhibit at the Met wants to shake up these stereotypes.
Sinica Goes to the Movies
from Sinica PodcastAs much as expats in China like to complain about the state of Chinese film and television, this week Kaiser and Jeremy remind us that there is a lot of great art out there, too, in a show that asks the critical question of: what is worth our...
Landmark Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art Opens at Metropolitan Museum of Art
A major loan exhibition of contemporary Chinese art presenting works by 35 artists born in China is now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, including 70 works in various media from the past three decades, from artists such as Xu Bing,...
From the Underground to the Internet—Contemporary Art in China
from Sinica PodcastIn the late 1990s, the visual arts in China operated on the fringes of society, and those who dared to flirt with public prominence risked finding themselves on the disapproving end of a government clampdown. And yet how different things seem...
A Homecoming
Shot in big cities and small towns across China in recent years, Shen Wei’s photographic project “Chinese Sentiment” is a personal journey to recapture bygone Chinese life in both private and public space. Born and raised in Shanghai, Shen Wei...
Alison Friedman on China and the Arts
from Sinica PodcastThe last ten years have seen a genuine transformation in China’s arts world, as a large sector that used to be dependent almost exclusively on government funding has been downsized into the maelstrom of the market, leaving survivors to navigate...
“Water Runs East for Ten Years, Water Runs West for Ten Years”
“Water Runs East for Ten Years, Water Runs West for Ten Years” is a song by the Guangzhou-based folk band Wu Tiao Ren from their first album, A Tale of Haifeng (2009). The songs on this album celebrate the sentiments and everyday lives...
China in Images and Words
from Sinica PodcastThis week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are delighted to host Matthew Niederhauser. A photographer focusing on urban development in China, Matthew has been published...
Lei Lei: A Sketch of the Animator As a Young Man
Lei Lei, a.k.a. Ray Lei, 27, is one of the best-known animators in China. Unlike many other smart kids of his generation who graduated from China’s top universities, he went off the beaten path early in his career and never turned back. In a...
China, at Party Congress, Touts its Cultural Advances
Party guidance is the "soul” of China's moves to privitize and promote industries that can spread soft power abroad.
Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema
Art, politics, and commerce are intertwined everywhere, but in China the interplay is explicit, intimate, and elemental, and nowhere more so than in the film industry. Understanding this interplay in the era of market reform and globalization is essential to understanding mainland Chinese cinema. This interdisciplinary book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of Chinese cinema, surveying the evolution of film production and consumption in mainland China as a product of shifting relations between art, politics, and commerce.