See China » Story of the Day

SeeChina Art Series: Beijing International Design Triennial

Emma Xu — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 05:31:20 +0000

The first Beijing International Design Triennial (BIDT) is held in China National Museum which is located on the east side of Tian’anmen Square from Sep 28, 2011 to Oct 17, 2011. Sub-themes of the five parts consisting of BIDT are CREATIVE JUNCTIONS, RETHINKING BAMBOO, REASON DESIGN EMOTION, GOOD GUYS and WHAT IF.

SeeChina has interviewed Benjamin Loyauté, a French independent curator who is in charge of the “REASON DESIGN EMOTION” part, Li Degeng (李德庚), a Chinese designer and curator, and Shi Dayu (石大宇), designer and the founder of Dragonfly Gallery.

SeeChina Art Series: the 18th Beijing International Book Fair

Emma Xu — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 03:28:57 +0000

SeeChina team went to the 18th Beijing International Book Fair on September 2, 2011. The BIBF ran from August 31 to September 4. This year’s BIBF was held at the China International Exhibition Center. The exhibiting area was 15,000 square meters larger than last year’s and wan divided into four major sections: domestic publication area, oversees publication area, digital publication area and periodical area and library purchasing. SeeChina interviewed the founder of Paper Republic and translator Eric Abrahamsen and Bas Pauw from Dutch Foundation for Literature and invited them to talk about literary exchange between China and the world.

SeeChina Art Series: the 14th Beijing International Art Expo

Emma Xu — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 01:40:39 +0000

The 14th Beijing International Art Exposition was held from from August 18 to August 22. SeeChina takes you to the Expo with our camera and enjoy various art works. The Expo has become an international platform for art exhibition and trade. We present you with interviews with the French artist Fu Jitsang (富士增) and the young Chinese artist Zhang Yuxi (张玉玺).

youtube video:

The 14th Beijing International Art Expo (2)

SeeChina Art Series: A Tour of Today Art Museum

Emma Xu — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:18:13 +0000

On August 6, SeeChina went to the Today Art Museum in Beijing and interviewed Renee Xu, director of Exhibition Department of the Museum. We bring you with our camera the Second Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Prints and Tui1 Chi2: Solo Exhibition of Zha Ba. Artists exhibited include Fang Lijun (方力钧), Xu Bing (徐冰), Chen Qi (陈琦), Liu Ye (刘野), Zhuang Huidan’er (庄辉旦儿), etc.

Zhang Meng: The piano in a factory

Jessica — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:48:55 +0000

A new indie film named “The Piano in a Factory” (钢的琴) is now gaining word-of-mouth across China. Directed by newcomer Zhang Meng (张猛) with a background of stage-design and scriptwriting, this 5 million RMB film (of which most money came in the difficult way) brings people back to the special milieu of 1990s, when the then shinning “heroes” of industrial workers in big factories of Northeast China found themselves suddenly made redundant and replaced by the rising class of commercial opportunists.

If the story of a desperate father ingenious and brave enough (with the support of his folk band friends) to hammer out a hand-made piano to win his daughter from his divorcee is not touching enough, the remniscent socialist music, collective warmth and the strong smell of the sweat and soot felt throught the film will perhaps capture you, and the absurd optimism of the heroes will also bring out a good laugh from most audiences, no matter they prefer Italian New Realism or Kustunica (again!).

Zhang Meng’s previous work include Lucky Dog (耳朵大有福), also set in Northeast China big factories and featuring grassroot yet immensely optimistic people. That film sold 200000 for Internet distribution, holding high hope for indie filmmakers today.

To learn more about this film, please refer to the trailer here:

Director Zhang Meng and several leading Chinese critics had a talk transcripted by mtime.com.

Bob Dylan in China

Jessica — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:41:09 +0000

Bob Dylan’s long-waited appearance on the stage of the Worker’s Gymnasium, Beijing in front of tens of thousands of enthusiastic audiences surely had a religious halo around it, at least to those really misty eyes and thumping hearts, yet it may also feel just like a piece of strange antique for some younger flashy souls who are accustomed to fancy lighting and dramatic costumes and can hardly detect any “entertaining value” from such a “low-fi” event.

On April 6, after years of negotiation and hardwork by Gehua Live Nation Entertainment and Sports, a joint venture famous for touring such big shots as Michael Bolton and the Eagles in China, 70-year-old Bob Dylan eventually held his successful concert in Beijing, to be followed by another in Shanghai. For three decades before this night, the Chinese people had learned his name by heart and admired him as a cultural hero even though they may not have more knowledge of his songs than the most catchy “Blow’n in the wind”. (Same emotions can be found on Michael Jackson, who were also the dream hero of many boys in the 1980s.)

By custom, most Beijing concerts would have a “yellow-bull market” in front of the venue, as laid-off worker peddlers trade tickets for high prices and sell horns and glow sticks, but this time, most audiences, about 1/3 of them middle age expats, didn’t seem to want the sticks and no one seemed to have the intention of selling any ticket. Inside the stadium, which seemed to have some sound problems in the beginning, even some most notorious “microblog” (Chinese version of Twitter) journalists seemed to have stopped texting messages due to the intensity of the performance. It seems that they were quite “captured” and would prefer not to be “disturbed”. Nevertheless, some young critics like Leizi of a music website admitted that this concert was “just like going out for vinegar”, there was “nothing moving and nothing visual at all”.

According to those lucky audiences who recorded their experiences in excited words, Bob Dylan sang the whole night away amidst his modest band members, he improvised a lot (as usual) and gave two encores, the last one being very suitable for Chinese mid-age and to-be-mid-age white collars: ”May you grow up to be righteous, May you grow up to be true, May you always know the truth, And see the lights surrounding you”.

Among the audience were also a great number of A-list singers and artists whose presence mark the importance of the event: Cui Jian, He Yong, Zhang Chu, Zheng Jun, Yue Minjun etc.. When asked about their impressions of this concert, Zhang Chu said it was just what he had expected and some of Bob Dylan’s readaptations gave him real pleasant surprises, Zheng Jun said he had expected to see a music “fossil” but he was astonished to see so much passion in Bob and was led to reexamine his own “direction of life”. And one of the most maverick young singers of China named Zuoxiaozuzhou (literally meaning “small leftist curse”) cheekily admitted that “with no flattery, no thanking and bowing, no solicitation for applauses, he made me sleep for four times, and that’s what a dignified poet is supposed to do.”

From various sources including an interview.

Zao Kong: A novel on Xinjiang

Jessica — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:57:06 +0000

Mr. Liu Liangcheng, who was famous for writting “The Village of One Person” (一个人的村庄), took four years to write a fiction entitled “Zao Kong” (凿空, or Hollowed Out). Set in a small town in Xinjiang which was hollowed out by two tunnel-digging fanatics and a huge project of oil-drilling, and narrated from the point of view of a young child whose ears were impaired by stone explosion, the book has triggered a lot of reflections on the impact of modernization on the rustic life of Xinjiang.

Published by Writers Publishing House (作家出版社) and can be read through the following link:

http://vip.book.sina.com.cn/book/index_132986.html

Promotional song from “Detective Dee”

Jessica — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:53:17 +0000

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (狄仁杰之通天帝国), a new film by famous Hong Kong director Tsui Hark (徐克) starring Andy Lau (刘德华), Carina Lau (刘嘉玲), Tony Leung (梁家辉) and Li Bingbing (李冰冰), has garnered wide acclaim in the Venice Film Festival before it will be formally released in China on September 29. Based on the story of the legendary Tang Dynasty detective Dee Renjie (630-700), this film will be an intriguing and spectacular show of intensive mystery-solving, Kungfu fighting, underdog striving, with psychological interpretation of an Elithabethan Chinese woman emperor: Wu Zetian (武则天).

poster of Dee Chen Chusheng, rising out of small pubs in Shenzhen

While many await with excitement this work of 5 years of efforts, SeeChina attempts to translate and share one of the most popular promotional songs of this film with our readers. It is sung by Chen Chusheng (陈楚生), winner of Superboy Singing Contest in 2007 (Chinese version of American Idol). Name of this song is Forgetful World (相忘于江湖), coming from ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang-tzu (庄子) who said famously that: It is much better to forget each other in a wide world than to moisten each other like dying fish in a small drench. The drumbeats and ballad-style music are quite catching to Chinese ears.

Chinese version

相忘于江湖

词曲：仓雁彬

演唱：陈楚生

我看见落日的风景，和你的影子
把寂寞唱成一首歌
我火一样沸腾的血，如最红的花
盛开着什么都不怕
哦——说尽了只剩一杯酒，
哦——若醉了不过一滴泪，
哦——看你不由衷的样子，
哦——人世间风干眼泪却抹不掉孤独。

我不怕红尘可笑
笑不尽无聊
谁能够穿过岁月不老
眼泪予谁去凭吊
谁又能知道
若与你痴做一场梦也好
反正最后是忘掉
谁忆今朝笑
何苦追问着情又难了
不如把一杯高歌
我放声地歌
谁能听到谁又能与我附和……

Tentative English translation:

Forgetful World

music/lyrics by: Cang Yanbin

sung by: Chen Chusheng

I see the world in a sunset, and your silhouette

And I wish I could sing out my solitude loud

My blood is fiery, boiling, like the reddest flower

fearing nothing in its fullest bloom.

Oh— Yet in the end we have just one cup of wine,

Oh— And if we get drunk we have only some tears to shed,

Oh— But I see how hard it is for you to break away,

Oh— Our tears will dry up quick, but will our loneliness do too?

I know how absurd this world is,

Yet we cannot laugh such absurdity away.

Who on earth does not get old anyway?

Who might cry for us if we vanish one day?

Whoever even knows?

I would rather share a stupid dream with you today,

since we will have to forget it anyway.

Who will remember our shared laughter today?

Why bother to ask where our hearts will go next?

Pray, let’s just sing out loud, winecups in hand.

I will sing out loud myself, but really I don’t know

Who will hear me, or sing together with me…

–

Link of this song:

mp3：

video (handmade by volunteers):

For official site of the film, see: http://dee.ent.sina.com.cn/

Trailer of “Detective Dee” (0)

100 questions from students of Chinese countryside

Jessica — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:01:37 +0000

Do city people eat artificial rice?

How can you find your home in a city where all houses look alike?

If a student acts naughty in class in the city, will the teacher see it from the computer?

How do you ride a plane? Do you sit on its wings or in its belly?

These are some of the 100 questions written by primary pupils from remote Chinese countryside in Yunnan province (e.g.,Yongren, Yuanyang, Xiangyun, Shangrila Counties). The questions were transferred through 50 rural teachers who have never left their hometown in their entire life, to primary pupils in Shanghai. And these teachers also got a chance to tour Shanghai Expo under the funding of Shanghai Overseas Compatriots Fund, East China Normal University, Phoenix Meida, Juneyao Airlines and Xinmin Evening, etc.

Cui Yongyuan (崔永元), a famous TV anchor who used to host the most popular social talkshow of China named Tell it straight (实话实说), is one of the masterminds behind this serial event to support countryside teachers’ visit to cities. According to Cui, who had trekked the Long March route from 2006 to 2007 and besaddened by the lack of information in those remote rural areas, there are altogether 5 million countryside teachers in China who are teaching over 100 million students in over 330,000 countryside schools. Their own vision and experience will influence the next generation of Chinese citizens in the countryside.

The Phoenix Media and Xinmin Media published many works of these students from the countryside:

http://gongyi.ifeng.com/special/xcjs/

The interesting life of rural families, by Hai Jinhua, Grade Six, Liangshan Central School

little dancers in a village school.

Wu Guanzhong, outspoken Chinese artist, dies at 90

Jessica — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:06:34 +0000

photo from xinhuanet

Ancient City of Jiaohe

Wu Guanzhong (吴冠中，1919-2010)，one of the most accomplished and outspoken Chinese painters, died at the age of 90 in Beijing on June 25.

Wu received artistic education in the Hangzhou National Arts Academy under guidance of such famous painters like Pan Tianshou (潘天寿, 1897–1971) and innovative and impressionistic artist and educator Lin Fengmian (林风眠, 1900–1991) in the early 20th century. In 1947, Wu went to Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts of France together with some other Chinese painters like Xiong Bingming (熊秉明), Zhu Dequn (朱德群) and Zhao Wuji (赵无极). He also became the only one who decided to go back to an uncertain China to become “a plum blossom in the winter of one’s hometown instead of a rose in an already prosperous garden of others”.

Since 1950, Wu taught arts successively in the Central Academy of Art, Tsinghua University and the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts. In the meantime, Wu’s painting style, which is a refined combination of western “bourgeoise” artistic experience with traditional Chinese brush painting, made him a target for mainstream criticism which believed that art must serve “the masses” with undiscounted social realism of that time. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when all the “labor-ignorant” intellectuals were dispatched to work in the fields, Wu continued to paint at every minute he could grasp with simple utensils stacked in ox-den baskets, which gave him the nickname of “ox-den basket painter” by the countrymen.

“Sometimes I’d spent hours gazing at a vegetable field from different angles to decide on my composition, and the folks would ask if I lost my watch or something… but still, when I showed my paintings to the country folks who offered me boarding, they could judge it sometimes as ’real’ (for the works I feel not so good about) or ‘beautiful’ (for those I’m really proud of), obviously they know the difference very well. ” recalled Wu in one of his interviews before.

Wu spent 15 years in the countryside, and one place he painted a lot is in Anhui Province, where many art students and tourists frequent today.
And in 1980s, Wu’s paintings and theories suddenly rose to fame along with the comeback of a large number of surviving intellectuals in the mainstream Chinese society, which was featured by fervent trends of “learning from the West” in both scientific and literary fields.

In the 1990s and afterwards, with more and more Chinese collectors getting rich and international collectors throwing dices over the Chinese art scene, Wu Guanzhong, who was among the few artists who were well-trained in both Chinese and western paintings, and one would even take the labor to crack on fake paintings in person, soon found his paintings rocketing to phenominal value (40.70 million RMB for his painting “Ancient City of Jiaohe” in 2007 ).

Apart from being exhibited in the British Museum (a rare tribute to living Asian artists), Metropolitan Museum, China National Art Museum and other major galleries, Wu also was made Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 1991 and became the first Chinese artist to be awarded the Médaille des Arts et Lettres by the Académie des Beaux-Arts de l’Institut de France in 2002.

Unimpressed by the global trend of commercialization in arts, Wu donated most of his works to Singapore Art Museum and Hong Kong Art Museum.

Wu is also famous for his outspoken criticism of the contemporary artistic scene of China, with such quotes as: “100 Qi Baishi the painter cannot substitute for one Lu Xun the critic”, “exploring one’s own feeling is like getting pregnant, one has to run about to get it”, ”the whole society is becoming shallow and crass, publications, galleries, exhbibitions, you’d better call it rice-bowl scramble”, “the nation shouldn’t spend money on feeding painters… what if our feeding creates no good painters at all? ” “Artists Association, Writers Association, these are but bureaucratic departments, if everyone gets his hand in arts, art will become a mess!”

sources mainly from the following sites, with translations and minor readaptations:

http://book.sina.com.cn/news/c/2010-06-27/2037270213.shtml

http://book.sina.com.cn/z/wuguanzhong/index.shtml

http://www.chinataiwan.org/twrwk/ywysh/201006/t20100628_1429776.htm