Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong.
This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box
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.
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.
CHINA has emerged as a front in the battle between Sky News and ABC to secure the next $100 million DEFAT contract to broadcast Australia Network.
ABC chairman Maurice Newman last week signed an agreement with Shanghai Media Group in China, while Sky chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos was on hand in Sydney on Thursday when regional pay-TV group Austar officially added Chinese national broadcaster CCTV to its line-up.
The ABC, which has the current Australia Network contract, said the agreement with SMG would give the two broadcasters the option to exchange television programs, provide news gathering support and explore international television program co-productions.
Selected Australia Network programs -- which range from ABC news to Bananas in Pyjamas and Home and Away -- "will soon" be seen on International Channel Shanghai.
Sky and the ABC are keen to underline their international credentials as Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith considers submissions on the future of Australia Network. Mr Smith received submissions from the ABC and Sky last Monday and will make a decision about whether to put the next five-year contract up for tender. An announcement is not expected until after the federal election.
The battle of Australia Network comes at a particularly tense time for the ABC and Sky, which is owned by Seven, Nine and BSkyB (part-owned by News Corporation, publisher of The Australian). The two broadcasters are now direct competitors following the launch of the ABC's 24-hour news channel.
In this animated short from the Talespinners Collection
, a young girl and her father move from China to Canada, bringing only their Chinese violin along for the journey. As they face the challenge of starting fresh in a new place, the music of the violin connects them to the life they left behind and guides the girl towards a musical future
Pixar maintained its unblemished record as the company's 11th release, Toy Story 3, launched at the top of the charts through Disney over the weekend. Arguably the most astonishing production house ever to come out of Hollywood, Pixar is a phenomenon. Its films all combined have grossed several billion dollars globally, almost every one is widely admired by critics, and several have won Oscars. The enduring appeal of the brand was demonstrated by the impressive $109m (£73m) launch, which shows that, 15 years after the first Toy Story appeared in cinemas, fans of all ages are still willing to turn out.
The number is significant in that Toy Story 3 is only the third animated feature to gross more than $100m in its opening weekend, Shrek Forever After and Shrek 2 being the other two. We can expect more and more 3D-animated features to achieve this in the years to come and every studio executive wants a good animation property. While they are labour-intensive, often taking several years from inception to delivery, well-rendered animated movies based on solid storytelling tend to yield high returns. The trick is to keep the production costs down and, as the sector matures, we are seeing this start to happen.
Live-action movies continue to struggle this summer, but I'm convinced this is nothing more than a blip; an unfortunate confluence of poorly executed material. It will pass. Hollywood will always churn out movies of varying quality – there will be plenty more shockers and delights in the years ahead. The question is, when will the theatrical experience level out – and what will that level be?
My translation of Han Han’s June 10 blogpost on the matter:-
“Solo Choir is finally going to the press this afternoon. In twenty days it will be on the market. Initially it will appear in book form and will be a bi-monthly publication. The price has been set at 16 yuans. Given the fact that there are no advertisements, this price has been made possible owing to the purchase a year and a half ago of paper sufficient for a run of 300,000 copies. Since then, the price of paper and printing has increased by about 20 percent. Thus, there may be a slight upward price adjustment in future.
Meanwhile, my associates and I will not attend press interviews. There will not be any specific book launching press conference either. The main reason is to lower prospective readers’ expectations about the magazine. Although the writers have provided very well-written articles, ultimately it is still only an arts publication. Whether from a technical or practical point of view, it cannot shoulder the responsibility of satisfying people’s longing for changes to be made to the status quo or for social reforms.
People would always say that this society needs to have common sense and to be inspired. But in my view, the internet has been around for ten years; those who needed to be inspired would have already been inspired, and those who have common sense have always had common sense. In fact, we all know what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is good and what is evil. It is an insurmountable force that makes us go against our conscience and twist the truth. If we want change, we can only rely on ourselves. This is no longer the ancient era. The information channels are 70 to 80 percent open. And we have a 70 to 80 percent grasp of the world. Thus, there is pretty little an arts publication is capable of doing other than providing good writings. If you go to see a romance film expecting it to be a war film, you are bound to be disappointed no matter how good the romance film is.
Renmin Park, the new album by the Canadian band Cowboy Junkies, is a fictional love story. The setting: the village of Jingjiang in rural China. In the fall of 2008, Cowboy Junkies songwriter and guitarist Michael Timmins lived in the small town for three months with his wife and three children, two whom are adopted from China. The young family's extended visit gave them the opportunity to settle in, make friends and get a sense of the surrounding people and culture.
"For a country like China that has been so dark for so many years ... there's an image we have on this side of the world of this very different and strange place," Timmins tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon. "You get to know people and their problems, and your problems are very similar."
Timmins' time in China was memorable, and one of the ways he documented his stay was by making field recordings of the sounds in the village streets and the music being made in the town parks — the social centers of Jingjiang.
"As soon as I got there, I realized I needed something more than my camera, because the sounds were something completely different to my Western ears," Timmins says.
Chinese Soundscapes
These new sounds would inspire new Cowboy Junkies material. As Timmins attempted to incorporate Chinese soundscapes and songs into his own music, he found a new friend in local Eric Chen. Chen filled Timmins in on modern Chinese rock and helped him translate songs and ideas from Mandarin to English and back. Their collaboration led Cowboy Junkies to work with mainstays of the underground Chinese rock scene, including Zuoxiano Zuzhou, whom Michael Timmins describes as "the Chinese Leonard Cohen."
The next step was for Timmins' bandmates to own and interpret this foreign and personal material. Margo Timmins, Michael's sister and vocalist for Cowboy Junkies, lent her distinctive voice to the unusual tracks, which transformed the songs from bits of artistic anthropology into Cowboy Junkies songs.
"It took me a while to find my way into these songs," Margo Timmins says. "I think if you put Mike, Pete, Allen and I together and ask us to play music to whatever ... it's going to have that Junkie stamp or feel."
BEIJING — The vuvuzelas providing the ear-splitting soundtrack for the World Cup in South Africa are proving a gold mine for manufacturers in China and a hit with buyers in the Asian nation.
Sales of the braying plastic horns both in China and other parts of the world have soared, with manufacturers struggling to keep up with demand and supplies selling out on some Chinese websites.
China's state-run Global Times said nearly 90 percent of South Africa's vuvuzelas -- whose bee-swarm buzz at World Cup matches has triggered complaints from fans, players and broadcasters alike -- are produced in China.
One company, the Jiying Plastic Product Corp. based in the eastern province of Zhejiang, sold more than one million of the horns in the first four months of the year, mainly to South Africa, and the orders keep coming in.
"We plan to produce 300,000 to 500,000 more through the end of the World Cup," Wu Yijun, the firm's general manager, told AFP.
The company produces 37 types of vuvuzela, at a wholesale price of about two yuan (29 US cents) apiece, he said.
Chinese fans and merchants are also getting into the craze.
"Starting from May, we received domestic orders for about 150,000 vuvuzelas. Before that, all the vuvuzelas we produced were for export," Wu said.
"The World Cup frenzy has greatly driven our business, and we expect revenue will jump more than 100 percent this year from a year earlier."
According to Huicong Plastic, a Chinese website that provides news on the plastics industry, manufacturers in toy-making hub Chenghai in the southern province of Guangdong have made "several million" vuvuzelas.
Chenghai toy manufacturers were quoted as saying that factories were working overtime to meet World Cup demand.
"We expect that even after the end of the World Cup, South Africa will still need vuvuzelas, and other countries will also add to vuvuzela orders," the report said.
Meanwhile, vuvuzela sales have been brisk on Taobao, the Chinese equivalent of eBay, with some individual merchants on the website selling out of thousands of the trumpets, at prices averaging around 20 yuan each.
The inside information of Facebook to enter China came in mid-April 2010, said that the earliest will be within three months. Then followed by a Chinese headhunter company said that Facebook already commissioned them to recruit the relevant General Manager in China, mainly in charge of the gaming business. On the surface, according to various sources Facebook is really going to enter China. These speculations on the king of the SNS industry created heated discussions all over the world. Netizens are especially curious about which Chinese name Facebook will use. Should it be “Lianpu” (脸谱) (types of facial makeup in Chinese operas), or slightly pictophoneic characters “Mianshu” (面熟) (first character means face, second character is a homophonic pun of the Chinese character “book” and it means familiar, together familiar face), or should it just follow what Google did phonetically translate the name to “Feisibuke” (“非死不可”) a very inauspicious term which means “must die”? But more importantly, now this temporary name seems to suggest the bleak future of Facebook entering China.
Difficult for traditional SNS to walk on the road of China
On the surface, Facebook entering China is a logical thing. Figures showed that Facebook’s page views for the first time surpassed Yahoo in February this year and has become the most popular network platform. However in China, as of early December 2009, the number of registered users of Kaixin001 (www.kaixin001.com) was close to 70 million, with over 2 billion page views and more than 20 million users logging in each day.
SNS’s future looked bright but this is only because of being popular. Although many companies put up advertisements, it seems that the investment is not as effective as imagined. Just as Facebook found helplessly that although it has reached 193 billion page views (December 2009 data), the click rate of the ads on the pages was very low. In December 2009, users’ time spent on the site for Facebook already surpassed Yahoo, reached 116 million minutes, users spent average of 247 minutes on the site monthly. However, these amazing numbers which attracted advertisers just cannot bring immediate value for the investments.
There has long been Shanzhai version of Faceook in China. Renren and Kaixin001 etc Chinese SNS were the earliest pioneers; actually both are imitating the Facebook model. In China, SNS also cannot solve the profit problem. Especially Kaixin001, in the beginning was almost like Facebook’s twin also inherited the difficult situation, and even more serious. So called white-collar platform network, Kaixin001 accumulated user base with MSN users in the beginning, going in the right direction but was not popular enough, only relying on web game plug-ins was difficult to trap the already busy white-collar group. And after Tencent SNS platform used similar plug-ins and successfully opened up grass-root market, Kaixin001 had a transformation, but because still unclear about the users’ faces, the problem of profiting still could not be resolved. After all, Tencent’s success is because the users’ consumption habits, while Kaixin001 has not trained their users with the habits, profiting by adding advertisements also could not be accepted by the users.
Model is unchanged, while the user group is completely different from Facebook in the U.S. if it continues to follow the traditional SNS model, then it’s just like recreating the problematic Kaixin001 in 2008.
Around 9AM on April 28, an old woman came to the office of Li Fuxiang (李福湘), director of Hebi Administration for Industry and Commerce.
The 72 year old elder's surname is Huang. She left home village 10 year ago to be with her only daughter in Hebi (鹤壁). Because both daughter and son-in-law regularly conduct business in Anyang (安阳), Mrs. Huang and her husband are in charge of caring for the 11 year old grandson Xiaohui (alias) while the couple is away. Xiaohui used to be an excellent student.
Things became strange around middle of March. Xiaohui started to return home late, and his pockets were filled with "rigid cards." When questioned, the normally well-behaved child appeared impatient and even swore. On March 18th, Mrs. Huang learned from the teachers that her grandson lately was often absent-minded in class.
What happened? The old lady felt very perplexed.
Old Mr. Huang has trouble walking due to his leg disability. Old Mrs. Huang decided to do some investigation alone.
On the afternoon of March 19th, Mrs. Huang surreptitiously followed Xiaohui who had just left school. He and two classmates went to an unmarked store instead of taking the usual route home. Mrs Huang was stopped at the door and could not go in. She then questioned her grandson's buddies, but the children were tight-lipped. After a week of persistent stalking, she was shocked to find out that Xiaohui had become addicted to internet gaming under classmates' influence. Mrs. Huang felt awful but knew that without concrete evidence the government would not interfere. She decided to gather direct evidence.
She learned from neighbors that legitimate cybercafés do not entertain children customers. Only illegal cybercafés let them in. The elder now had a special mission: guard the route that the children must take, and secretly follow them until she finds the "target." A few trips later she found the destinations but was not allowed to enter. Thus she had no specific proof that these were illegal.
On one such trip, an empty beverage bottle inspired Mrs. Huang. Starting from end of March, she began walking the streets with a plastic bag half-filled with empty bottles. Unlike other garbage collectors, she specifically asked for and lingered around places that had cybercafés. Under the pretext of garbage collection, she was able to go in any suspicious buildings and verify the nature of the equipment inside.
Authors from countries including China and Ethiopia bring a fresh tempo to the story of life in 21st-century America
Dinaw Mengestu speaks for a generation of young Ethiopians. Linda Nylind for the Guardian.
Anyone concerned that America is becoming an insular nation should take heart from the latest New Yorker list. Here are writers from China, Ethiopia, Russia, former Yugoslavia, all of whom are winding new immigrant stories into the narrative of American life in the early 21st century, much as the fugitives from war-torn Europe did in the 20th century.
Dinaw Mengestu, whose first novel won the Guardian first book prize in 2007, speaks for a generation of young Ethiopians who have made Washington their home.
Published in the UK as Children of the Revolution, the novel appeared in the US as The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears – somewhat bizarrely, given its downbeat subject matter.
Mengestu's cast of braggarts and drifters look on helplessly as the yuppies move in on their deadbeat neighbourhood, gentrifying the houses while boycotting the mouldering cornershops.
Yet it is not only new characters that writers such as Mengestu or another Guardian prizewinner, Yiyun Li, bring to the party, but fresh tempos and tempers. Mengestu's prose is so restrained as to seem at times almost lethargic, while Chinese-born Yiyun Li's debut story collection and the novel that followed it have a flatness of style that is not incidental to her storytelling but an essential part of it.
Compare these with the neurotic realism of the one married couple to appear on the list, Jonathan Safran Foer – another Guardian prizewinner – and the undersung Nicole Krauss, both of whom write within the rich European Jewish tradition of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Philip Roth. Or with Joshua Ferris, whose first novel, Then We Came to the End, offered a pin-sharp post-modern portrait of office life.
Of course no list would be complete without its unknowns. Just as the Granta young writers' list gave us Monica Ali when Brick Lane was still in manuscript, the New Yorker introduces us to Téa Obreht, a 24-year-old from former Yugoslavia, who came to notice with an extract in the magazine of her upcoming novel, The Tiger's Wife.
One can argue about the value of these lists, and the shadow that they can cast over a writer's career. One might also point out that a great many of the New Yorker 20 have already featured among Granta's best of young American novelists 2007. But in a publishing world where quantity so often swamps quality, a writer cannot be namechecked too often. And one thing's for sure – David Reumnick's diverse and interesting line-up will be referred to for years to come
CHINESE cinema-goers will later this month thrill to Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, as Robin Hood and Maid Marian, flinging the filthy French from the beloved homeland.
Their movie has been selected as one of the 20 foreign films annually given access to China.
At first blush, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor might seem the perfect theme for a society that has been avowedly communist for 60 years.
This, after all, was the way Mao Zedong came to power: leading a revolt against fat rural landowners and inherited wealth.
But a second take leads to different thoughts. Today, it is the Communist Party that is the establishment, and it is cadres who hold most of the keys to privilege and power. The wealthy are expected to become party members.
So who will Chinese viewers identify, if their thoughts turn to today's parallels, as the heroes and villains?
An erroneous view has taken root abroad, following the communist ascendancy, that China's culture is now - as people wrongly presume it always had been - one of subservience and deference to The Powers That Be: the kowtow as kosher.
If so, then, Chinese viewers of Robin Hood will rather focus on the theme of the righteous ruler returning to claim what is rightfully his, rather than on revolt.
The triads can be traced back, legend has it, to secretly loyal followers of the displaced Ming dynasty who conspired to undermine the succeeding Qing rulers, the Manchus, who had swept in from the northeast, from beyond the Great Wall. In this reading, the cruel yet oddly effete French rulers of England in Ridley film might have their equivalents in the Manchu-speaking barbarian Qing emperors.
Miss Ellie at the 2009 World's Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair on Friday, June 26, 2009, in Petaluma, Calif.
Miss Ellie, a cock-eyed Chinese Crested Hairless dog who took top honors at the Animal Planet 2009 "World's Ugliest Dog" pageant, died Tuesday after a long career in show business and years of do-gooding for animal shelters.
She was 17.
The tiny pooch, who hailed from Pigeon Forge, Tenn., won hearts with her bug-eyed stare, lolling tipsy tongue and shock of blond Chewbacca hair.
Ellie was a prolific dog model and actor whose show biz credits included appearances on the Animal Planet show "Dogs 101," billboard ads and years as a local star in the Pigeon Forge Comedy Barn.
Goehring rescued Ellie eight years ago from an owner who no longer wanted her - and has since entered the loveably ugly pup in several competitions to raise prize money for animal shelters and the Humane Society.
To honor Ellie's charity efforts - she raised over $100,000 for her community over the years - the mayor of her town has proclaimed Nov. 12 "Miss Ellie Day."
Goehring will pay respects to Ellie by raising money for a new animal shelter. "I am going to make that my driven goal to do in her honor," Goehring said.
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- Grabbing some popcorn and taking in a movie
is a habit few of us think twice about. In China it's been a different
proposition, however, when cinemas are often old and run down, and
there's a much better selection of movies free on the Web or pirated on
DVD.
But now, new figures showing a huge jump in Chinese box-office receipts
send a clear message -- mainland Chinese have caught the habit of paying
for content.
As the industry leapfrogs into the modern age of digital and 3D cinemas,
it has also stumbled onto a massive new movie audience. This will be
making studio executives from Hong Kong to Hollywood sit up and take
notice.
To foreign studios, China must have seemed like one long horror movie,
with overseas films limited by quota to 20 a year, with a gross revenue
share, and with piracy losses so large that few even bothered to try
counting.
Set in 184 A.D., “a period of decadence and moral laxity” in China,
Yunosuke Yoshinaga’s Rampage (CMX) is a violent “mature”-rated
manga fantasy taken from a classic tale from Chinese literature, Romance
of the Three Kingdoms. As a work of historical fiction, Kingdoms
has apparently fueled a variety of manga and manhua adaptations over
the years, though as your typically culturally blinkered Westerner, I’m
forced to primarily take the story at face value. As a result, I
initially found some of the background machinations a trifle confusing
where I suspect those who know the original legends won’t. (So the
founder of the Way of Peace sect incites an army that’s responsible for
the rape and pillage of the country’s villages? The Way of Peace is
strange, indeed.) But as long as the manga kept its focus on its
disreputable young hero, Zhang Fei, I was able to stick with it.
Tibetan director Pema Tseden's life has been in a spin recently. Just
arrived back in Beijing after a three-week visit to the US, where he
screened his films and exchanged ideas in several universities and Asian
societies, Pema hasn't yet overcome the jetlag. During the sleepiest
hours of the day, he still comes out to meet his crew about his new
film, although he can barely open his eyes.
Two cellphones rang continuously in his coat pocket, with the
occasional text messages beeping in. Pema answered every one of them
without delay, switching between Chinese and Tibetan. Pema speaks Amdo
dialect, one of the three Tibetan dialects widely spoken in Qinghai
Province, the same as the characters in his films.
Fast fame
As a director who has only graduated from Beijing Film Academy last
year, fame seems to have arrived too fast for Pema. His first long film,
The Silent Holy Stones, won a fistfull of international awards and
nominations; and he was invited to New York as one of the five directors
representing Chinese independent cinema, together with Jia Zhangke and
Li Yang, whose films won prizes in Venice and Berlin.
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.
FEELING THE BEAT: Nine-year-old Sinawo
Botile, who has been invited to return to China in July to again
perform traditional dancing. With him are his parents, Lisakhanya and
Simphiwe Botile. Picture: ALAN EASON
FROM an early age,
little Sinawo Botile was raised to dance to the beat of plastic bottles
– and now his dancing skills have wowed crowds in China.
The nine-year-old from Needs Camp near East London
started dancing to the beat of 25 litre plastic bottles when he was
just a baby.
His father Simphiwe Botile used it as a means to
calm Sinawo down. “He got used to the beat and if he was crying, he
would make moves which eventually put him to sleep.”
At the age of two, when Sinawo started crawling,
his first move was towards the bottles and he would start beating on
them.
Botile, himself a dancer and founder of Lumanyano
Cultural Group, said his son would mimic movements made by the dance
group, and became known as the “Inspiration Baby”.
Ulan Bator / One hundred competitors will take
part in the morin khuur music competition this week. The morin
khuur (translates as horse-head fiddle) is a two stringed musical
instrument associated with Mongolian traditions and culture.
Competitors
together with researchers, composers and morin khuur makers from
Mongolia, China, Inner Mongolia, Japan, USA, Russia, France, and Germany
will participate.
The morin khuur body and neck are carved from
wood. The top of the neck is made in the form of a horse's head, which
gives the instrument its name. The sound is similar to that of a violin
or a cello. It is played with a bow made from the willow, traditionally
stringed with horsetail hair coated with cedar wood resin. Modern
professional horse-head fiddles use a bow made with synthetic strings.
The
winner of the competition will win a prize of MNT1.5million, second
place MNT1million and third place MNT800,000. Sponsors of the
competition have added several more prizes in various categories.
After a month of beta testing, Baidu's biggest new product, Qiyi.com,
has been launched to the Chinese public. It's a streaming video site
that focuses on Chinese TV series and movies, rather like Hulu in the
US.
Indeed, the US investors in Hulu have also ploughed
USD 50 million into Qiyi. They're clearly hoping that the site can
replicate the success of Hulu, which turned a profit in its first year
of operation - a rare feat among video-sharing or video-on-demand sites -
by generating massive ad revenue from its licensed content. Hulu this
week announced a USD 10 per week subscription, but it's highly unlikely
that such a model would be used by Baidu for Qiyi.
Qiyi's content will also be fully
licensed and above-board, leading the way in a clean-up in Chinese video
sites, such as Youku and Tudou, who are now also removing huge swathes
of TV series and entire movies - both Chinese and Hollywood/US content -
from their vaults, in a year-long process of going legit, in order to
attract more lucrative advertisers.
If you're annoyed about random Asian characters being re-done by the
white folk, how about this: Mickey
Rourke told the Orlando
Sentinel that he is going to play Genghis Khan
in an upcoming biopic. Genghis. Khan. In other words, the Mongolian
emperor whose invasions of neighboring lands earned him much of Central
Asia and China, before successors stretched the barriers even further.
As a story of conquest, we're talking the thundering hooves of horses,
large-scale massacres, and all the charming aspects of war -- prime
content for a man like Rourke. But playing an Asian conqueror?
What is this? 1965 and Laurence Olivier playing Othello? 1956
and John Wayne playing Genghis? It would be just as weird as John Cho
playing Christopher Columbus. Anyhow, Rourke says that John Milius, the pen
behind Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now, wrote the script,
and it will focus on how Genghis' son and grandson saw him. "You see him
in flashbacks, back when he was in his mid-40s. And back then, being in
your mid-40s was being REALLY old." Rourke goes on to discuss how he's
probably a better horse rider than he is a car driver, has his great
stunt crew ready for the gig, and really likes that Khan was also a dog
lover: "in one instance, in this script, he orders his men -- 'Hold the
dogs back.' He was looking out for the dogs. I like that."
Is Rourke just kidding? Is this really happening? Weigh in with your
thoughts below.
GALVESTON, TEX. -- Cruise southeast out of Houston, past the NASA exits
and toward the Gulf of Mexico, and you pick up something a little incongruous on
the radio, amid country crooners, Rush Limbaugh, hip-hop and all the
freewheeling clamor of the American airwaves.
"China Radio International," a voice intones. "This is
Beyond Beijing."
Way, way beyond Beijing.
Sandwiched between a Spanish Christian network and a local sports
station, broadcasting at 1540 on your AM dial, is KGBC of Galveston,
wholly American-owned and -operated, but with content provided
exclusively by a mammoth, state-owned broadcaster from the People's
Republic of China.
Call it KPRC. Or as the locals quip: Keep Galveston Broadcasting
Chinese.
The little Texas station may be modest, but it is part of a
multibillion-dollar effort by the Chinese government to expand its
influence around the world. As China rises as a global force, its
leaders think that their country is routinely mischaracterized and
misunderstood and that China needs to spread its point of view on
everything from economics to art to counter the influence of the West.
Beijing's new response is typically massive and ambitious: a $6.6
billion global strategy to create media giants that will challenge
agenda-setting Western behemoths such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.,
the BBC and CNN.
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.”
While his poll numbers in the states aren't what they used to be,
some Chinese entrepreneurs must be hoping the "Obama brand" holds strong
internationally.
A nightclub named after the American president, the Obama
Entertainment Club, opens Monday in Shanghai, China. Details about how
exactly the club is Obama-themed still are scarce, though promotional
materials found by the blog Shanghaiist tout that the club "will bring
international glamour, excitement and refined luxury to the Shanghai
entertainment scene."
A Web site has been started for the party space, but it is still
under construction, and a logo has been unveiled. It's Obama's name with
a bare hot pink woman's leg posing out of the "O."
Don't the Chinese know it's bare arms, not legs, that the Obama
administration is known for?
Billionaire Steve Wynn opened his latest hotel and casino in
Macau Wednesday and said he aims to start building a massive new
resort in the Chinese gambling mecca next year.
Wynn said the project _ to be located in the territory's Cotai
area, a piece of reclaimed land seen as the next great hope for
global gambling _ would likely feature less than 2,000 rooms, about
400 tables, restaurants, shopping and meeting rooms set across some
50 acres of lush gardens and landscape.
Next to the towering interconnected hotel-casino projects in
Cotai from competitors like Las Vegas Sands, Wynn's planned resort
would stand in marked contrast.
"What makes people happy and what don't they get in China? ....
What you don't get in China is space, and the heart of a resort is
space _ gardens, places to gambol, not gamble," Wynn, chief
executive of Las Vegas-based Wynn resorts, said in an interview in
Macau.
Ariana Lindquist for NPR
The map
Miss Ellie at the 2009 World's Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair on Friday, June 26, 2009, in Petaluma, Calif.
Ulan Bator / One hundred competitors will take part in the morin khuur music competition this week.
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