REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

大型新编史诗京剧赤壁 Red Cliff (Peking Opera )

 

大型新编史诗京剧赤壁
国家京剧院和中国国家大剧院的联手制作
于魁智饰演诸葛亮,个人很欣赏于魁智在这段中华丽的声线，明亮的眼神，俊秀的面庞，儒雅的气度，深邃的感情等等等等

唱词：

月迷离
星明灭
雁声凄凉

立赤壁
望大江
襟怀激荡
汛怒潮狂

众将士喜庆功欢声豪壮
我这里满斟酒祭洒长江

一樽酒酹江风 告慰东壤
此一战保江东六郡安康

二樽酒酹江月 佑我主上
从此后三分鼎汉祚重光

三樽酒酹江涛 珠泪盈眶
望残橹听鹤唳顿起悲凉

自古道兵者凶器慎用为上
好男儿入沙场非死即伤
纵然是曹孟德奸雄狂妄
他麾下也都是赤子儿郎
一把火几多家天塌祸降
母唤儿妻盼夫痛断肝肠

普天下谁不想太平安享
读书人本应当礼义兴邦
怎奈何逢乱世满途荆莽
也只好羽扇纶巾驱虎狼
盼只盼长风扫却烟尘障
诸葛亮再归隐躬耕南阳。

Large the new epic Peking Opera Red CliffAnd launch of the National Peking Opera Company and the China National Grand TheatreYu Kuizhi as Zhuge Liang personally appreciate very much during this gorgeous voice in Kuizhi, bright eyes, handsome face, refined bearing, deep feelings and so on and so forthLyrics:January blurredStars winkingYansheng bleakEstablished Red CliffWang Changjiang RiverTaste of agitationFlood bore madPublic soldiers festive, functional cheers heroicI am here full pour wine festival sprinkle the Yangtze RiverA bottle of wine, sprinkle river wind to comfort the East PyongyangThe First World War Paul Koto well-being of CountiesTwo bottles of wine, sprinkle Jiang month woo my lordFrom one-third of Ding Han Jo ShigemitsuThree bottles of wine, sprinkle Jiang Tao Zhu Lei filled with tearsThe hope residues scull listen dicey Dunqi desolateCaution as the ancient Tao soldiers who weapon onA good man into the battlefield wounded or deadEven Caomeng De King 's Men arrogantUnder his command are pure KenjiroA beacon for more than a few monsters disaster downMother calls the child Qipanfutong broken enterohepaticThe whole world who do not want to be too enjoy peaceReading this should FELL prosperousThe persevering Every troubled times full of rocks Jing MangAlso had to lupine Lun towel drive tigersHope only hope the winds sweep but smoke barrierWise hermit Gonggeng Nanyang.

Translation by Machine AT Google Translate.

American Prisoners of War in China! Part 1/5

Birgit Nilsson "In questa reggia" from Turandot

Famous Chinese Classical Music Return of the Fishing Boat

How pianist Lang Lang stirred up trouble for US and China at a White House State dinner

To Lang Lang it was a beautiful melody. To US conservatives and Chinese nationalists his musical selection conveyed a slight snub – underscoring how sensitive relations between the US and China are.

• 
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During a State visit at the White House in Washington, Wed., Jan. 19, for President Obama and China's President Hu Jintao, Musician Herbie Hancock performs at the piano.

Beijing

You know what they say about the political spectrum not being linear, but circular, with the extremes meeting up?

We have a perfect example of that this week in US-China relations. Conservative commentators in the US and the most rabid nationalists in China share the view that Chinese pianist Lang Lang dissed America with a piano piece he played at the state dinner President Obama hosted for President Hu Jintao last Wednesday.

RELATED: China's President Hu Jintao goes to Washington

Lang Lang himself and everybody else seem to think the idea is nuts.

After playing a duet with Herbie Hancock at the dinner, the exuberant 20-something Chinese pianist – one of the world’s classical music sensations – played a piece called “My Motherland,” a melodious patriotic Chinese song that most people here know and love. (See the Youtube of the performance here)

Read more at The Christian Science Monitor

 

 

 

Chinese cellist to perform with National Symphony Orchestra

Taipei, Dec. 9 (CNA) Famed Chinese cellist Jian Wang will join Taiwan's National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in two concerts in Taipei on Friday and Saturday, an experience he said will be "inspiring and very exciting."

The cellist, born and raised in China, gained worldwide attention at the age of 10 when he was discovered by Ukrainian-born violin virtuoso Isaac Stern, whose encouragement and support paved the way for Wang to study music in the United States.

Wang has performed with many of the world's top symphony orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and NHK Symphony Orchestra, to name a few.

At a press conference Thursday, he said he was very excited about the two concerts because he would be performing under the baton of NSO resident maestro Lu Shao-chia. Wang described Lu a real friend and a conductor with an outstanding sense of music style and a clear beat.

"Lu is 10 times better than any of other foreign conductors I have worked with in the past," Wang told reporters.

Read more at focus taiwan

Chinese bamboo flute：鹧鸪飛 / 竹笛：陳悅

Is China poised to become next opera superpower?

BEIJING—When Italian opera star Leo Nucci set off in 2009 on his first-ever working visit to China, he concedes he felt a measure of excitement.

“I’d heard about the passion for opera that was just starting to emerge in China,” says Nucci. “Some of my colleagues had been there.”

Their reports, however, were no preparation for what Nucci was about to encounter.

As he and soprano Desiree Rancatore finished the aria that closes Rigoletto’s third act, the audience inside Beijing’s opera house erupted with applause.

And it would not stop.

After several deafening minutes conductor Donato Renzetti finally signalled to the performers to do the aria all over again, for pure pleasure — on the spot.

And so they did, to yet more rapturous applause.

In 40 years of performing, the 67-year-old Nucci confides, he had never felt anything like it.

“The reaction of the people, the entire house on its feet, my name being called out in Chinese — honestly, it made you feel like a rock star,” he says, in his glowing baritone.

“This was one of the most powerful and moving moments I have ever felt on stage.”

It was also a clear signal that western opera has arrived in China.

It might not yet have the broader appeal it enjoys in New York, London or Toronto, or in the capitals of continental Europe.

Read more at theStar.com

Created in China

With Western music flooding the mainland, preserving China’s traditional ethnic instruments is becoming more critical than ever.

In Shanghai’s super-modern grand Theater, a fashionable, mainly young audience applauds enthusiastically as Guo Yong takes center stage. He acknowledges the semicircle of musicians around him and prepares to play a solo. But Guo does not raise a flute, trombone, or oboe to his lips; instead, he proudly holds aloft a large bushy tree branch covered in leaves. Blowing on one of the leaves, he produces a sound that mimics the twittering of birds as he plays a traditional Buyi folk song. The other musicians on the stage include a Mongolian throat singer, an ethnic Kazakh from northwestern Xinjiang playing a two-stringed banjo, and a four-member Miao minority singing troupe from a village in southwestern Guizhou.

It’s the first time such music has ever been performed in the Grand Theater, a formal venue more accustomed to large Western symphonies playing Beethoven. But these musicians are all playing traditional songs from their various ethnic groups. The songs are interspersed with new, specially composed pieces inspired by these traditions, sung in lilting, ethereal tones by Zhu Zheqin, the Cantonese-born singer whose vision this concert embodies. Zhu, better known abroad as Dadawa, has always stood out in China’s contemporary music scene; in the 1990s she became the first Chinese musician to win international acceptance in the “world music” field with her Tibetan-inspired albums Sister Drum and Voices From the Sky. Now she has made it her mission to help preserve China’s traditional ethnic music.

In 2009, after being appointed a United Nations Development Program ambassador, Zhu traveled through some of China’s remotest regions—accompanied by a film crew, photographer, and writer—in an attempt to document the traditional music of various minority groups. In the course of their four-month odyssey, they recorded more than a thousand songs. In Miao areas, Zhu watched young people singing love songs on the mountainsides—a traditional courting ritual for an ethnic group that has no written language. She heard hundreds of people of the Dong minority singing complicated, multipart music without a conductor. And in Tibet, she discovered a historic form of religious music played only in one village. But Zhu realized that many of the best musicians were old, and some of the music was at risk of dying out. “I was shocked by the beauty of what I heard—it was so good,” she says. “But it needed support. I hope to let people see the beauty of these things in the contemporary era.”

Read more at NEWSWEEK

Going Baroque in China

Christopher Hogwood teaching a master class in baroque music at Beijng’s Central Music Conservatory earlier this month

BEIJING — The young musicians ended the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and looked expectantly at the maestro. Christopher Hogwood weighed his words carefully then decided that honesty was the best policy.

“That was Tchaikovsky,” the 69-year-old guru of Baroque music said to falling faces. “It was not Baroque music. Can you buy CDs of Baroque music in China? DVDs? I’d suggest listening to them first.”

It was a small but telling scene at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, where Mr. Hogwood was holding a master class on Baroque music. As part of an unprecedented program of Baroque music at the Beijing Music Festival, Mr. Hogwood was in town doing pioneer work: bringing 17th- and 18th-century western music — Bach, Handel, Rameau, Lully and Vivaldi — to a country where western classical music seems to begin and end with the big Romantic stars of the 19th century — Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler — with a bit of Mozart and even less Bach thrown in to the mix.

But as Mr. Hogwood was discovering, even students at this prestigious school had little idea what Baroque was all about. Students could not play without “vibrato” — the rocking of the hand on the violin neck that is typical of later classical music but rarely used in the Baroque era. They didn’t know how to organize themselves on stage like the music calls for and didn’t have scores from the Baroque era, instead using heavily marked-up sheet music that turned the light, subtle score into overpowering Romantic fare.

“Baroque is totally neglected here,” said Song Tu, program director of the Beijing Music Festival, which featured four Baroque-era performances. “There’s no Baroque ensemble anywhere in China, there are no period instruments, and it’s basically not taught in the conservatories. Most people aren’t even aware it’s part of the western classical music tradition.”

Read more at The New York Times

 

Master Of The Leaf: Preserving China's Music

Hear The Leaf, The Dongbula And The Modentsuur

Classically trained composer Guo Yong says it took him years to see the value of his Buyi minority music, such as blowing on leaves to mimic birdsong.

Louisa Lim/NPR

Classically trained composer Guo Yong says it took him years to see the value of his Buyi minority music, such as blowing on leaves to mimic birdsong.

text size A A A

October 28, 2010

On a chilly Beijing afternoon, musician Guo Yong is rooting through some bushes, choosing an instrument. He is a master of the common or garden leaf. Picking an average leaf and flicking it to check its elasticity, he puts it up to his mouth and blows against the surface, mimicking birdsong.

This skill catapulted the classically trained composer onto the stage of Beijing's egg-shaped National Theatre. He's among a number of ethnic minority musicians who are working together with Chinese pop singer Dadawa to save dying musical traditions from extinction.

Guo is from the Buyi minority, from Guizhou province in Southwestern China, and this is where he learned his leaf skills.

"In Guizhou, it's very mountainous," Guo says. "Sometimes it's boring to walk by yourself, so you grab a leaf and blow on it and copy the birds. Sometimes you use leaves to call to people, to talk to them, since with leaves the sound goes farther."

Guo says it took him years to see the value of his own traditional culture.

Reaad more and listen to audio clips at NPR

Armless Chinese Man a Toe-Playing Piano Star

Liu Wei, Whose Arms Were Amputated after a Childhood Accident, Becomes a Sensation on "China's Got Talent"

AP)  Pianist Liu Wei sits quietly to compose himself before plunging into the music. Then he takes off a sock.

The 23-year-old, whose arms were amputated after a childhood accident, plays the piano with his toes.

Liu was thrust into the limelight earlier this month when he performed on "China's Got Talent," the Chinese version of the TV show that helped make Britain's Susan Boyle a singing star.

"Whatever other people do with their hands, I do with my feet. It's just that," says Liu, a tall, slender man who peers shyly from behind dark-rimmed glasses.

"China's Got Talent," which has also featured disabled modern dancers and break-dancing migrant workers, has been a hit since its launch in July, despite skepticism among some viewers about whether all the participants' stories are genuine. The Dragon TV program is drawing attention to the hopes and challenges of the disabled and otherwise disadvantaged in China.

In his first appearance, Liu received a standing ovation from the audience, many of whom were moved to tears, for a performance of "Mariage D'amour" by Richard Clayderman.

Read more at CBS News

China's pop queen Faye Wong plans comeback

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - The woman widely regarded as the "Queen of Mandopop" is making a long-waited comeback with a limited series of concerts in Beijing and Shanghai in October and November, six years after her last release.

The almost effortlessly cool Faye Wong has sold millions of albums and won fans across Asia, with songs ranging from the heart-rending early hit "Easily Hurt Woman" to the ersatz, Buddhist-inspired trip-hop of her 2000 album "Fable."

The entertainment pages of Chinese internet portals were dominated last week by pictures of Wong at a brief Beijing news conference to announce her return, many simply carrying the headline "The Diva Is Back."

Her popularity shows little sign of fading, with advanced sales for the just 10 concerts of her comeback tour -- five each in Beijing and Shanghai -- reaching 18.88 million yuan ($2.79 million) in only 10 days.

"Is this figure really that accurate?" the typically taciturn Wong asked, in one of her few utterances at the news conference in which she kept the press waiting for three hours and was then on stage for a mere three minutes.

Famous for her icy demeanor, Wong, 40, had more or less withdrawn from the limelight five years ago to concentrate on her charity, set up to help children born with cleft lips and palates, as her second daughter was.

Read more at the Washington Post

China's Leaders Harness Folk Religion For Their Aims

 

In China, folk religion has undergone a remarkable rebirth since the days of the Cultural Revolution four decades ago, when all religious worship was banned.

One example of a folk goddess that has gained an enormous following is Mazu, a sea deity believed to protect sailors and fishermen. Though she started as a local folk goddess, she has entered the Daoist and Buddhist pantheon, and is also known as Tianhou or Tinhau in Hong Kong.

Scholars say she has an estimated 160 million followers and 4,000 temples devoted solely to her in China.

The explosion of interest in this folk god reflects the results of a 2006 survey in China, which found that two-thirds of those who described themselves as religious were Buddhists, Daoists or worshippers of folk gods.

Ariana Lindquist for NPR

In China, Mazu, a folk goddess of the sea, has an estimated 160 million followers and 4,000 temples devoted to her. Cheng Zhigui, 23, is dressed to perform in a traditional opera during celebrations for Mazu's 1050th birthday on Meizhou Island in the southern province of Fujian. "We perform for Mazu. We believe she's watching us sing opera. Even if nobody came, she'd still be watching us," he says.

 

In China, Mazu, a folk goddess of the sea, has an estimated 160 million followers and 4,000 temples devoted to her. Cheng Zhigui, 23, is dressed to perform in a traditional opera during celebrations for Mazu's 1050th birthday on Meizhou Island in the southern province of Fujian. "We perform for Mazu. We believe she's watching us sing opera. Even if nobody came, she'd still be watching us," he says.

China's communist leaders once dismissed worship of deities such as Mazu as nothing more than superstition and banned it.

But far from mistrusting Mazu's millions of worshippers, China's atheist Communist Party is now encouraging them and overseeing massive events, such as the birthday celebration in early May this year at Mazu's birthplace, Meizhou Island in the southern Chinese province of Fujian.

The Birth And Growth Of Mazu Worship

Temples across the island participate in the celebration. On the night before Mazu's 1,050th birthday, the island's Mazu statues are getting spiffed up before the big day. In the Mazu temple in Wenxing village, an elderly woman carefully lowers garlands of red banknotes around the neck of a statue of Mazu.

Crowds of women clad in lucky red clothes kowtow to the altar, burning incense and murmuring appeals to Mazu's mercy.

Mazu was a real person; temple guardian Wei Yazhen tells her story.

Read, watch, and listen to the story on NPR

 

NCPA's version of Carmen to be staged in May

The classic operatic piece "Carmen" will be staged at China's National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in two weeks.

This time, the work is under the baton of renowned Chinese conductor Chen Zuohuang, and helmed by leading American theater director Francesca Zambello. The cast includes artists from Britain, France, the United States, Belgium and China.

Zambello says this is the fifth time she has had the chance to direct "Carmen", and that she will continue to do the very best she can.

"It's a universal story. I'm so happy that... my collaborators are wonderful. We are trying our best to tell the age-old story, and I hope to tell it in a very beautiful and meaningful way that pleases our audiences."

Huang Xiaoman, the music director of the new version, says Zambello and her team will ensure a high-level production. Huang also says she is confident that the National Center for the Performing Arts orchestra and chorus will provide solid backing for the opera.

China.org.cn

The East is Red

Added to the director's chair - THE EAST IS RED!

The dance epic was created on the initiative of Premier Zhou Enlai. Employing the art forms of song, dance and poetry, it depicted the arduous struggle of the Chinese people to achieve victory from past hardships. The team of directors and choreographers was led by Chen Yading and Zhou Weizhi. Both of them were artists and administrators in art and literature circles. There were 29 choreographers led by Zha Lie involved in this work and rehearsals for the dance epic lasted for months. The premiere of the work and the following performances were all held at the Great Hall of the People.

richien

More at the director's chair

Lang Lang Plays Rimsky-Korsakov on an iPad at Concert

As reported in fellow Journal blog Digits, tech company Smule sent an iPad loaded with its new app, Magic Piano, to Chinese prodigy Lang Lang earlier this month. Smule co-founder Ge Wang didn’t hear from Lang Lang initially. But the musician appears to approve of the app, which lets users easily play music by touching beams of light that stream down from the top of the screen. Earlier this week, Lang Lang pulled out the very same iPad on stage for an encore at a concert with young musicians in San Francisco and played Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

The Wall Street Journal

Hip Hop Grannies

Beijing ladies with an attitude.

Music Bridges the Political Divide in China

DALIN, TAIWAN — When a Taiwan music ensemble performed its reconstruction of Chinese imperial court music last year in Beijing, it marked not just a cultural milestone, but a political one.

The concert provided a rare opportunity to hear ancient sounds salvaged from a nearly vanished musical tradition. The 3,000-year-old genre known as yayue, or “elegant music,” faded with the collapse of dynastic rule in 1911, and nearly succumbed to the later Maoist assault on “feudalistic” elements of China’s past.

But it was also a chance for people from both sides of the long-divided Taiwan Strait to compare notes on which parts of their joint Chinese heritage have been preserved, or not.

“The audience response was quite strong. Many were hearing this music for the first time,” said Xie Jiaxing, director of the China Conservatory in Beijing, which had invited the Yayue Ensemble of Nanhua University to perform in the capital.

“For political reasons, we haven’t done enough to research yayue,” Mr. Xie said. “Taiwan’s Nanhua University has done a really good job in this respect. Afterwards, our students wrote to the school saying how happy they were to discover such a great treasure in ancient Chinese culture, even though they don’t really understand it.”

Read more at The New York Times

Journey to the East

The Philadelphia Orchestra leaves Monday for an 11-concert tour through South Korea, China, and Japan.

'Welcome to Seoul Namsan Gugakdang, where classical music is lively breathing."

So reads the greeting on the Web site of one of three South Korean concert halls where the Philadelphia Orchestra will perform during its Far East tour. The marathon begins Thursday in Changwon, South Korea, and ends seven cities, 11 concerts, and three countries later in Shanghai.

During this uncertain time in its history, the orchestra stands to get a vitamin B-12 shot not only from audiences at prestigious Suntory Hall in Tokyo, where storied orchestras such as Philadelphia's are venerated, but also from parachuting into the opening week of Shanghai's World Expo 2010, a world's fair of Olympic-sized visibility.

"Being on the international stage is priceless. The goodwill that gets generated, the relationships it builds, the transatlantic conversations about what's going on here . . . has long-term benefits to the city," said Mayor Nutter after a bon voyage news conference Wednesday at the Kimmel Center.

Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer

YeLaixiang - Li Xianglan

crerjp — April 29, 2007 — Japanese actress Ueto Aya sang this YeLaixiang (夜来香)for the Japanese TV drama Rikoran 李香蘭(TV Tokyo,テレビ東京) in February 2007. You can also listen to Suzhou Nocturne (蘇州夜曲) here. DVD of this drama 李香蘭(Kadokawa Pict. 角川映画) is available from Amazon.com etc. to see full of story.

Li Xianglan(李香蘭、李香兰) was born in China in 1920.　When she was 13, her Chinese foster father(養父)gave her name Li Xianglan. She lived as a Chinese singer and actress, hiding the fact that she actually was a Japanese named Yamaguchi Yoshiko(山口淑子). In order to avoid anti-Japanese movement against the invasion of Japanese army, she had tried to hide it till the end of WW2 . In some Japanese movies, she got a role for Japanese propaganda. After noticing it by herself, she had much suffered from consideration of sin.

Once, there was an episode for her national identity. When she had a concert in Japan, a local newspaper scooped that she was actually a Japanese. Then she replied ---"I know the paper made my real name public, but I don't worry whether I lose my populality. The important thing is how well I act and sing on the stage. And I think my nationality is just an East Asian woman." ---

Read more crerjp

China's wartime history still haunts popular theme song

To karaoke crooners in Japan, the Chinese song "Yelaixiang" has been a favorite among elderly singers nostalgic for a bygone era.

More recently, another Japanese oldie composed and written against the backdrop of 1940s China is making a comeback in Japan's karaoke bars. This time, even young people are joining the act.

"Soshu Yakyoku" (Suzhou Nocturne), composed by Ryoichi Hattori with lyrics written by poet Yaso Saijo, was used as a soundtrack for a TV commercial this spring advertising Chinese oolong tea. Pop singer Ryo Asuka of the pop group "Chage and Asuka" even put the song on a solo album 10 years ago.

Both songs were originally made popular by Yoshiko Yamaguchi, the China-born Japanese actress who made her name in pre-World War II China under her Chinese stage name Li Xianglan.

Yet in today's China, the two songs receive very different treatment.

The Chinese authorities allow "Yelaixiang" to be performed in public. "Suzhou," however, is banned.

Suzhou is the theme song of a sequel of the popular 1940 movie "Xina no Yoru" (China's Night). The song's lyrics depict the separation of two lovers -- a Japanese sailor and a Chinese female guerrilla fighting against Japanese invaders.

Suzhou's lyrics, set against the scenic eastern Chinese city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, are anything but propaganda or militaristic. Nonetheless, Katsuhisa Hattori, 62, the eldest son of composer Ryoichi Hattori, says China's censors are unforgiving to this day.

BNET

Shuffling Dylan's Papers

The Bob Dylan in China controversy continues to twist and turn. As news Web sites keep reporting that Dylan had to cancel planned concerts on the mainland because the Chinese government refused to issue him a permit, the government itself has said that it isn't true.

The Ministry of Culture released a brief statement stating that it never received an application to stage concerts by Dylan, thus contradicting claims made in the South China Post by the Taiwan-based promoter, Brokers Brothers Herald Ltd., that had reportedly been in charge of setting up the shows.

The Oriental Morning Post of Shanghai, citing a statement by music industry commentator Su Mengjin that BBH had reportedly tried to resell the rights to mainland promoters to each of Dylan's concerts for an astronomical fee, wrote that, "If this price is true, it is no surprise that mainland companies dare not accept it. After all, in popularity, he is Bob Dylan, not [Taiwan superstar] Jay Chou and not [Korean boy band] TVXQ."

Read more at PollStar

Songs for working class heroes

Xie Qianyi (right) and He Liheng play in Guangzhou in December, 2007.

By Liu Meng

Folk music often chronicles the life of the unsung working class, which in China's case are the millions of migrant workers far from home in the many metropolises across the country.

However, the absence of such music in China inspired two young musicians to tell these tales, drawing inspiration from their friends and neighbors in the small migrant worker suburb of Xiaoluotang outside Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.

Both graduating last year, music composition major Xie Qianyi along with girlfriend He Liheng, a pianist and music education major, started their electronic folk duo Beibeiku while sophomores at the Guangdong Vocational College of Literature and Art.

With He's sweet vocals (in both Cantonese and Putonghua) cradled by Xie's acoustic guitar riffs and sequenced beats, Beibeiku draws from subjects and events important to everyday people in China, whether it be songs about the Wenchuan earthquake or how millions of train travelers were stranded at the Guangzhou railway station during the Spring Festival 2008.

Read more at Global Times

Mammoth Dylan-in-China Motherlode, #1

Early this week, before I was distracted on other business (check your upcoming June issue of the Atlantic; check your bookstores next year) I was looking into the surprisingly complicated question of why Bob Dylan is no longer going on a concert tour of China -- if he was ever going to do such a tour in the first place. Most recent item here, with links back to preceding items in the Dylan series.

A ton of interesting testimony and analysis has come in since then. Here is a sample installment to get going. Probably two more installments to come. The emerging theme is that whatever "really" went on with this now-scrubbed concert tour, it probably wasn't the version trumpeted around the world a week ago, and that I initially believed: namely, that the Chinese authorities had turned down the tour for fear of a Bjork-like embarrassing comment by Dylan. As I mentioned, this is a spillover cost of any kind of censorship policy: when people know you've shut down some kinds of expression, they're willing to believe you've shut down others even when you haven't.

But let's get to the evidence. First, from someone close to the music scene in China right now:

Dylan's people probably had little/ no idea about the real reasons they were being denied access to China.  The only thing they are guilty of is accepting a ridiculous offer from BBH [the Taiwan-based tour promoters who were handling the tour]  and allowing them to try and sell on/ guarantee the shows in mainland China.  This is actually quite common practice (US/ UK agents are happy to take the money and run), but if the wrong partners are chosen, it opens the door for "flipping", which the balance of evidence suggests happened here.

Reead more at The Atlantic - James Fallows