See China

When CCTV1’s prime time dramas come on air, the viewers know immediately what the broadcaster is attempting to address. They are all issues that affect the population, ranging from national projects such as the Qinghai-Tibet railway, to northeast China’s countryside entrepreneurship, to the lives and troubles of people on different social ladders in big cities.

For many English readers, the spelling of a Chinese name often brings a lot of headache, but a list of humorously romanticized Chinese names created by the notoriously mischieveous “netizens” of China, seem to have paved out a shinning way for this brave new global village. For example: Johnny for Confucius, Angel for Ma Ying-jeou, and Louis Bond for Liu Bang, founder of Han Dynasty who lived about 2000 years ago.

On March 27, an (almost perpetual) interesting topic was brought up by the Paper Republic on the reception of Chinese literature, or the lack of it, among “Western readers”.

Online travel company Ctrip got a lot of people excited yesterday when they began advertising for adventure trips throughout China, including base jumping in Shanghai, capture the flag in a tiger park, and spending the day as a terracotta warrior.

A book written by Lu Shi’e (陆士谔) in 1910 fortold the event of Shanghai World Expo in a very fasinating way. Lu, a Qing dynasty novelist and doctor, wrote a fictional book entitled New China (新中国) when he was 32 years old, in which the protagonist “dreamed” of Shanghai’s bustling business, subway, Pudong Bridge and above all, the opening of Shanghai World Expo exactly a hundred years later.

How do the Chinese see, hear, smell, taste,touch,feel and fantasize about their world? What are the shared memories underlying Chinese culture and arts? Jiang Xun (蒋勋), a celebrated aesthetics scholar and essayist from Taiwan, talks about the exquisite world of sensibilities and shared memories of the Chinese.

The above Time Magazine China Edition cover for 2 February 2004 shows the female author Chun Shu (春树 Spring Tree), nicknamed Beijing Doll 北京娃娃 who wrote a best seller describing her sexual experiences after dropping out of school. This may not sound like a promising start to a discussion of New Chinese Literature, but is [...]

This article presents 11 short stories that explain various ideas of Chinese mythology and philosophy. Shenlong（the divine dragons) 神龙 1 when Nuwa woke up, the sun was already high in the sky; though she covered her face with some leaves and branches, the bright light still shone though she turned her body towards the forest [...]

《变形记》Bian Xing Ji at the SARS Stage at Chaoyang 9 Theater Reviewed by Elyse Ribbons Sitting in the cheerfully decorated small theater on the 4th floor of the Chaoyang 9 Theater compound, the atmosphere was full of expectations.  The second part in an ongoing series by Director and Playwright Wu Ran, Bian Xing Ji was [...]

One of the top showcases for films from Hong Kong and the rest of China opened Monday, with the Asian Film Awards kicking off the Hong Kong International Film Festival.