News about Chinese Culture
NPR On the Media Goes to China
I came to China not knowing much and I leave knowing only a little bit more, but I have been drawn into the story and will continue to watch it, through the dark blurry lens of that hole we all dug to China in our childhood backyards. Now, back to New York to make a radio show about China.
Brand China
With the Olympics just weeks away, China is making the final preparations for the PR push of the century, pitching brand China to the world. Meanwhile, young urban Chinese are sorting out new identities and advertisers everywhere are revving their engines, preparing to sell to the fastest growing consumer market in the world.
China Vision
How the world sees China, and how China thinks it is seen by the world may make all the difference as time marches on. The West cannot afford to hold on to kung fu, Confucius, and chopsticks as our big ideas about China.
Journalism With Chinese Characteristics
There is real investigative reporting in China, it’s just not done under a free press flag. Instead, practitioners mind an unstated set of rules, keeping themselves safe by employing tactics like using excessive jargon and exploiting government rivalries.
Young & Restless in China
FRONTLINE explores the generation coming of age in China today. Shot over four years, the film follows a group of nine young Chinese from across the country as they scramble to keep pace with a society changing as fast as any in history. Their stories of ambition and desire, exuberance, crime and corruption are interwoven with moments of heartache and despair. Together they paint an intimate portrait of the generation that is remaking China.
Beijing Lights Up the Night
Hurrying inside toward the throbbing techno music on a recent Friday night, Chen Ping, a 26-year-old graphic designer, chuckled at the sobering warning. “The person who thought of that is smart,” he said. “Young Chinese are looking for an escape because they work so hard. Maybe it is good to remind them not to lose their way.”
“Chinamerica” – An East/West Mashup
I’m not sure what I expected to find here. I haven’t been to this part of China since the early 90’s. Unlike Shenzhen, which is a brand new city, Beijing has a rich history and it is very, very old. But it doesn’t feel old – every other building is under construction, there are public and private building projects on practically every block.
In Inner Mongolia, Pushing Architecture’s Outer Limits
At a time when housing markets across the West are contracting and American architects’ billings are at their lowest point in 12 years, according to the American Institute of Architects, Mr. Cai (pronounced sigh) was offering his guests a rare chance to build big — and paying them, improbably, in wads of cash.
Horatio Alger Multiplied by 1.3 Billion
Mr. Feng, the chief executive of Aigo, a large Chinese consumer electronics company, is a classic Chinese entrepreneur: starting with $31 in his pocket, he has built a business whose products are a staple of urban China, including digital cameras, MP3 players and a new iPhone-like all-in-one device.
An Auction of New Chinese Art Leaves Disjointed Noses in Its Wake
An Auction of New Chinese Art Leaves Disjointed Noses in Its Wake Sotheby’s auction house called it the “most important collection of contemporary Chinese art to ever come to market” — some 200 works by some of China’s hottest names. But the sale of the works has stirred indignation among many of the artists and their dealers and some curators.
China’s Pop Fiction
New York Times, May 4th – The most successful writer in China today isn’t Gao Xingjian, the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize. It’s 24-year-old Guo Jingming, a pop idol whose cross-dressing, image-obsessed persona has made him a sensation in a country where the Communist dictatorship advocates prudery and heterosexuality.
Stopping Traffic in the People’s Republic
New York Times, May 4th – It had become clear why my children were attracting so much attention. They look Chinese, but not exactly. They look Western, but not quite. What they really look like is what they are: a blend of me, a Chinese-American, and my husband, a blond 6-footer of English and Irish descent.
Horatio Alger Multiplied by 1.3 Billion
New York Times, April 26th – Mr. Feng, the chief executive of Aigo, a large Chinese consumer electronics company, is a classic Chinese entrepreneur: starting with $31 in his pocket, he has built a business whose products are a staple of urban China, including digital cameras, MP3 players and a new iPhone-like all-in-one device.
China Needs Old Boys With M.B.A.’s
New York Times, April 19th – One evening in Beijing, I wandered into a local bookstore…The place was enormous…But here’s what really struck me. You know how, when you walk into a Barnes & Noble, the first thing you see are the hot new hardcover fiction titles? Not in this place. Instead, that first, precious point of sale was reserved for, of all things, management books.
Growing Up Han: Reflections on a Xinjiang Childhood
The US media rarely covers the regular people who are living in the areas of China with large ethnic minorities. In chatting with a Han Chinese student at the University of Colorado named Leong, I was struck by his nuanced perspective on his experiences growing up in Xinjiang.
Beijing Air Terminal Goes All Out for the Games
New York Times, May 2nd – Beijing airport’s new Terminal 3 — twice the size of the Pentagon — is the largest building in the world.
China Tries to Solve Its Brand X Blues
New York Times, April 12th – Li-Ning is a Chinese sneaker and athletic wear company named for its founder, Li Ning, a Michael Jordanesque figure in China who won three gold medals in gymnastics during the 1984 Olympics. Six years later, realizing that China lacked a high-end high-quality sneaker, Mr. Li started his company, where he remains chairman of the board.
China’s Loyal Youth
New York Times, April 13th – As is clear to anyone who lives here, most young ethnic Chinese strongly support their government’s suppression of the recent Tibetan uprising. One Chinese friend who has a degree from a European university described the conflict to me as “a clash between the commercial world and an old aboriginal society.” She even praised her government for treating Tibetans better than New World settlers treated Native Americans.
Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History
New York Times, April 13th FOR many Tibetans, the case for the historical independence of their land is unequivocal. They assert that Tibet has always been and by rights now ought to be an independent country. China’s assertions are equally unequivocal: Tibet became a part of China during Mongol rule and its status as a part of China has never changed. Both of these assertions are at odds with Tibet’s history.
Chinese Art Continues to Soar at Sotheby’s
New York Times April 10, 2008 Sotheby’s sold $51.77 million worth of Chinese contemporary art in three auctions in Hong Kong on Wednesday, allaying concerns that the global economic slowdown would depress the prices.
Eating Beyond Sichuan
Chinese food in its native land is vastly superior to what’s available here. Where are the great versions of bird’s nest soup from Shandong, or Zhejiang’s beggar’s chicken, or braised Anhui-style pigeon or the crisp eel specialties of Jiangsu?
A Rat in the Kitchen
Eating and knowing what we eat is my concern this new year as we ponder the stubborn inability of Americans to understand Chinese food.
Modern Gloss on China’s Golden Age
China spent the greater part of the last century struggling to become a modern nation. But after so many years spent looking outward and forward, some Chinese are once again looking inward and back — way back, to the golden age of philosophers like Confucius (551-479 B.C.) and Zhuangzi (369-286 B.C.).
The Pyrotechnic Imagination
Cai Guo-Qiang says his favorite artistic moment is the pregnant pause between the lighting of the fuse and the detonation of the gunpowder. “There is a pressure in it to be preserved, and then it explodes,” he says. “This moment belongs just to the artist and the work.”
Let a Hundred Decadent Spas Bloom
ALONG the Shanghai street, choking haze draped the buildings and gridlocked traffic like a damp blanket. Vendors screamed out prices for water and postcards, and pedestrians hacked into handkerchiefs and covered their faces with masks. Construction workers in torn, dirty jeans bored a hole into the sidewalk, geysering dirt everywhere.
Little-Known Entrepreneurs Putting China Near Top of Billionaires’ List
Unlike America’s rich, China’s are hardly famous, even here. Bill Gates and Warren E. Buffett are known around the world. But Yang Huiyan and Robin Li?
Growing Underground Is Making Noise in China
BEIJING — Down a short alley in the sprawling, tourist-mobbed 798 art district here — a complex of 1950s-era military factories converted into galleries and studios — is a tiny shop that serves as one of the centers of China’s small but thriving experimental music scene.
Christmas in China
Look at predominately Buddhist China. The up-and-coming economic power has a small community of Christians.
Chinese Unveil Mammoth Arts Center
Compared variously to a floating pearl and a duck egg, the titanium-and-glass half-dome of the National Center for the Performing Arts formally opened its underwater entryway to Chinese officials and dignitaries here over the weekend.
Italian Style Is Refracted Through a Chinese Lens
In one of the stranger acts of globalism, the Chinese are writing Italian operas. Xiao Bai’s “Farewell My Concubine” from the China National Opera House is touring the United States and came semistaged to Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday night.
Fortune’s Sisters
THERE is an ancient Chinese myth that people who are destined to meet are connected from birth by invisible red thread. For three Brooklyn mothers who were strangers until a few years ago, the legend has a deeply personal resonance. In early 2004, when they traveled in the same group to adopt year-old girls in China, Martha Laserson, Molly Parker-Myers and Lauren Uram made a discovery that would thread their families together for life.
1977 Exam Opened Escape Route Into China’s Elite
In the autumn of 1977, as relative calm returned to China after the decade-long chaos of the Cultural Revolution, An Ping was laboring in the countryside where she had been sent, like millions of other young people from the cities, to learn from the peasants.
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