Sony and Wanda Team Up to Market Films in China
Deal could boost Sony Pictures’ box-office returns, strengthen Dalian Wanda’s movie-business profile
A New Literary Genre Critiques the Scariest Part of Life in China: Reality
Enter chaohuan, the "ultra-unreal"
Once a Voice of Young China, Han Han Stakes Out a Different Path
Han Han discusses his writings, the turns his life has taken and what people in the West fail to understand about China
African Migrants in Guangzhou, Forgetting, Family Planning’s Fate, and More...
from Yuanjin PhotoPhotographing the aftermath of catastrophic events is challenging—one that photographer Mu Li handles with creativity and grace looking back at the chemical explosion in Tianjin that damaged as many as 17,000 homes August 12, 2015. Another...
The People in Retreat
from New York Review of BooksAi Xiaoming is one of China’s leading documentary filmmakers and political activists. Since 2004, she has made more than two dozen films, many of them long,...
What Is Cultural About the Cultural Revolution? Creativity Amid Destruction
from Sinica PodcastThis year marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic decade of...
Creativity Class
The last three decades have seen a massive expansion of China’s visual culture industries, from architecture and graphic design to fine art and fashion. New ideologies of creativity and creative practices have reshaped the training of a new generation of art school graduates. Creativity Class is the first book to explore how Chinese art students develop, embody, and promote their own personalities and styles as they move from art school entrance test preparation, to art school, to work in the country’s burgeoning culture industries.
The Kaiser Kuo Exit Interview
from Sinica PodcastThis week, Kaiser sits in the guest chair and tells us about his 20-plus years of living in China. He recounts being the front man for the heavy metal band Tang Dynasty and the group’s tour stops in China’s backwater towns, shares his feelings on...
Vietnam TV Station Drops Chinese Drama Over South China Sea Dispute
The decision comes as several Chinese celebrities speak up against the The Hague’s ruling.
Chinese Architect’s Nature-Infused Buildings Take World By Storm
Ma Yansong blurs the lines between lanscaping and architecture, inspired by his Chinese culture....
HBO Asia, China Movie Channel to Co-Produce Martial Arts Flicks for TV
The project will be HBO’s first Chinese-language production starring Chinese talent.
Using Free Sex to Expose Sexual Abuse in China
Nanfu Wang hoped that a woman called Ye Haiyan (“Hooligan Sparrow”), who had offered free sex on the Internet to draw attention to the plight of poor women selling their bodies to support their children, would lead her to the prostitutes she...
‘Warcraft’ Marches Past $200M, ‘Finding Dory’ Debuts to Solid $17.5M
Warcraft is experiencing the big-splash, big-crash pattern followed by nearly every Hollywood tentpole in China this year.
Incendiary Memoir by Chinese Rights Lawyer Reaches Bookshelves Abroad
An account of government critique, life in prison, and life under surveillance....
L’Oreal Is Setting A Dangerous Global Precedent By Bowing to China Over Free Speech
Lancome cancels concert to appeal to the mainland, sacrificing freedoms for their parnerships....
A New Language for Chinese Film
from New York Review of BooksKaili Blues, an eccentric, remarkably assured first feature by the young Chinese director Bi Gan, is both the most elusive and the most memorable new movie that I’ve seen in quite some time—“elusive” and “memorable” being central...
In Sichuan Province, an Artisan Retreats to China’s Past
Hanshan, an ethnic Miao, survives by selling the clothing he dyes to the same people he considers too materialistic.
Rising in the East
China's film industry has grown so big so fast, that it is now looking to compete with Hollywood.
Meet ‘Depth of Field’: The Month’s Best Chinese Photojournalism
from Yuanjin PhotoWelcome to ChinaFile’s inaugural “Depth of Field” column. In collaboration with Yuanjin Photo, an independent photo blog published by photographers Yan Cong and Ye Ming on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, we will...
Reality Show Singer Breaks China's Cultural Revolution Taboo
Yang Le sings of how he lost his father in Mao’s crackdown on perceived enemies 50 years ago.
Market for Chinese Art Is Increasingly in China
Chinese decorative art and antiques was one of the few auction sectors that grew in 2015.
Xi Jinping: A Cult of Personality?
By some accounts, Chinese Presdient Xi Jinping is the most powerful leader the country has had since Mao Zedong. One arrow in his quiver that echoes Mao’s armory is Xi’s embrace of popular song, listened to these days not on the radio or over a...
China Could Beat Hollywood by 2017
The country’s box-office sales are growing an average of 34 percent a year.
China: No More Weird Buildings
New guidelines will forbid the construction of "bizarre" and "odd-shaped" buildings that are devoid of character or cultural heritage.
Lost in China’s Exploding Future
from New York Review of BooksChinese director Jia Zhangke’s new movie, Mountains May Depart, begins with a disco dance in a bleak mining town to the sounds of “Go West” by the Pet Shop Boys. It is the lunar New Year, 1999. Outside, the end of the...
Does Chinese Investment Pose a Threat to Hollywood?
The Wanda Group, China’s leading real estate developer, on Monday paid $3.5 billion for a controlling stake in Hollywood studio Legendary Entertainment, maker of Jurassic World, among other global blockbusters. At a time when Hollywood...
In ‘Mr. Six,’ China’s Changing and Staying the Same
from China Film InsiderPlaying an aging gangster railing against the “little punks” who kidnapped his son in Beijing, Feng Xiaogang gives a solid performance as the title character of Mr. Six: a gravel-throated vigilante shaken when his go-it-...
China's Wanda Acquiring Controlling Stake in Legendary Entertainment
Wanda aims to be a global entertainment giant, buying the No. 2 U.S. cinema chain AMC for $2.6B in 2012.
After Mysterious Disappearance, Hong Kong Publisher Claims He Is In China ‘Cooperating with Authorities’
Lee Bo specializes in books critical of the Communist Party.
China's Alibaba Pictures Ousts Senior Board Member After Graft Allegations
The company hasn't been able to contact the former Tencent executive since he was detained by authorities in July.
While We’re Here: China Stories from a Writers’ Colony
from Sinica PodcastWhen Ernest Hemingway somewhat presciently referred to Paris as a movable feast (“wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you”) he captured the concerns of the long-term expat rather concisely. So why does everyone like to...
A Wordless Elegy for China’s War Dead
Mr. Wang explained why he wanted to write a requiem about a war that ended 70 years ago.
Q. and A.: Jindong Cai on ‘Beethoven in China’
Jindong Cai, 59, is an orchestra conductor and a professor at Stanford University.
China: Novelists Against the State
from New York Review of BooksCan writers help an injured society to heal? Did Ōe Kenzaburō, who traveled to Hiroshima in 1963 to interview survivors of the dropping of the atomic bomb on that city eighteen years earlier, and then published a moving book...
Chinese Hits Miss Out on the Global Box Office
from China Film InsiderIf he’d had the time after meeting American captains of industry in Seattle and Barack Obama at the White House, Chinese President Xi Jinping might have ducked out at the close of his United Nations appearance and into a New York...
Zhang Yimou: ‘Even Though Our Market Is Growing Fast, We’re Still Not Satisfied’
Hollywood has Steven Spielberg and China has Zhang Yimou, the senior statesman of moviemaking in the People’s Republic. From Red Sorghum, his 1987 debut right out of the Beijing Film Academy, through Hero, which grossed more in...
Showing Another Side of China - via Instagram
One night last spring, two veteran photojournalists working in Beijing came up with an interesting idea.
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.”
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-...
A Painting of China’s First Lady, Before a Rise to Stardom
On the exhibition notes, the painting of Peng Liyuan by Jin Shangyi is identified only as “a well-known singer.”
In Zhang Yimou’s ‘Coming Home’ History is Muted But Not Silent
Coming Home, directed by the celebrated Zhang Yimou and released in the U.S. last week, begins as a man escapes a labor camp in China’s northwest and tries to return home. But he is captured when he and his wife attempt...
From Amateur to Professional: A 25-Year Photographic Journey
These old photos are a record of a time now gone, not just for a developing China but also for an updated version of myself.
Hip Hop in China
from Sinica PodcastKaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined today by Jerry Chan and Matt Sheehan for a look at hip-hop in China. Both guests should be familiar to long-time listeners in Beijing. Jerry has been involved with the local music scene for over a decade and...
China Teaching Troops Folk Dances to Make Friends in Xinjiang
China's military tries to improve relations with the minority people who live there.
‘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...
French Director’s Chinese Movie Balances Freedom With Compromise
In 2012, French movie director Jean-Jacques Annaud got a warm welcome in China after more than a dozen years as persona non grata there for having offended official Chinese Communist Party history with his 1997 film ...
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...