Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s latest attempt to cultivate his image as a man of the people is creating some unintended consequences. Qingfeng Restaurant, an unassuming local eatery where Xi ate a meal of pork buns, fried pig liver and vegetables last month, has since become a staging ground for residents to protest against their local governments.
The screen portrayal of a cancer sufferer whose illegal import of foreign medicines into China spurred national policy changes has become a box-office smash as audiences flock to a rare Chinese film on a hot-button issue.
Dying To Survive is based on Lu Yong, who was arrested in 2013 after illegally importing a generic cancer drug in a case that sparked public debate about high medical costs.
“I performed at Tiananmen Square in 1989, 15 days before the crackdown. I sang A Piece of Red Cloth (一块红布), a tune about alienation. I covered my eyes with a red cloth to symbolize my feelings. The students were heroes. They needed me, and I needed them. After Tiananmen, however, authorities banned concerts. We performed instead at “parties,” unofficial shows in hotels and restaurants”.
"May you live in interesting times" is the familiar Chinese saying, usually spat out as a curse. You can see why in "A Touch of Sin," a film by renowned director Jia Zhang-ke. That kind of time is now, in the history of his country. With four vignettes inspired by real-life "ripped from the headline" events, he shows what the great economic expansion of China is doing to the majority of its people.
"Stand Up, Sisters" tells the story of a rural girl who journeys to Beijing for a family visit, only to be deceived and forced into prostitution, suffering unthinkable hardships. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, these women are rehabilitated. The narrative reaches its peak with her and her younger sisters' victorious achievement of self-reliance.
Trade School is a self-organised, alternative learning space that runs on barter. It was started in 2010 in New York’s Lower East Side by Rich Watts, Louise Ma, and Caroline Woolard of OurGoods.org, a creative barter network. Over 800 students participated in 76 single-session classes during 35 days. Anyone can teach a class, and students sign up by agreeing to meet the barter requests of teachers.
Song Dong's Waste Not consisted of a single installation comprising over 10,000 commonplace, domestic items of daily life that had been used and amassed by the artist’s mother (Zhao Xiangyuan) over fifty years.
New Beijing, New Marriage is a documentary shot by Fan Popo, a Chinese gay rights activist in 2009. The film recorded that a gay couple and a lesbian couple, who were volunteers instead of real homosexual couples, were having their wedding photos taken at Qianmen Street on Valentine’s Day. Qianmen Street is a crowded and famous shopping street in Beijing.
Ge Yulu’s artistic practice playfully pulls at the strings of a social system that, although seemingly all-encompassing, is in fact a malleable structure consisting of individual human beings. For his 2016 project Eye Contact, Ge positioned himself in front of a surveillance camera and stared directly into the lens for hours, then negotiated with a security guard to buy the footage.
A large chair installation work featuring the Chinese name of detained artist and activist Ai Weiwei was set up in Taipei Saturday --the 22nd anniversary of the Tiananmen SquareMassacre -- to call for Ai's release.
Bei Ling, an artist from China who has been barred from enteringhis home country since 2000, used 1,001 empty chairs to piece together the three characters of Ai's name in Liberty Square at 6: 04p.m.
HEFEI, China (AP) — Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people gathered Thursday near a state funeral home in Beijing as China’s former second-ranking leader, Li Keqiang, was put to rest, while a steady stream of mourners showed their respects at the ex-premier’s childhood home in central China.
Li, who was China’s top economic official for a decade, died last Friday of a heart attack at age 68.
Fresh off the Boat examines the immigrant struggle told from the perspective of Eddie Huang, a modern day chef and video entrepreneur who has found a way to use food to explore culture, diaspora, and more through food, television, and the book that I am discussing now.
This book serves as an important storytelling experience of the immigrant and helps bridge the generational struggles often seen in these stories.
The following description is taken from the website of Aljazeera America (find link below):
In early December, Ju Hyun-u, a student at South Korea’s elite Korea University, taped up two white sheets filled with his handwriting on a campus bulletin board. His message began with a question, “Are you doing all right?”.
A photography project on China's marriage market has recently reignited the debate about marriage in China, and the phenomenon of women deemed too old to marry, or "leftover women" in the country.
By Paul Ferguson, CNN
updated 9:50 PM EDT, Sun March 25, 2012
Atlanta (CNN) -- Song Byeok had every reason to be pleased with his success. A gift for drawing led to a prestigious career as a propaganda artist and full membership in North Korea's communist party.
Then the food shortages started.
A group of activists took to the trains to protest the horrendous treatment that the Singapore government meted out upon 22 individuals who were detained 30 years ago under an operation that was entitled,"Operation Spectrum" with the use of the Internal Security Act (ISA).
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) by Ai Weiwei is a highly provocative work of art. This series of three black and white photographs portray the artist holding a 2,000-year-old Han dynasty urn that, frame by frame, he drops, it falls, and shatters. As much a work of photography as a work of performance art, in each still an unaffected Ai looks directly at the camera aware of his destructiveness.
Born in China in 1941, artist Lily Yeh experienced first-hand the ravages of that country’s civil war when her family became refugees, fleeing to Taiwan as the communists took over. That personal story and the story of Yeh’s global art activism with communities from North Philadelphia to Rwanda and China is the subject of a new documentary film, The Barefoot Artist, now in post-production and ready for viewing later this year.
The video DON’T COVER UP, STEP UP is a public service announcement raising the issue of gender-based violence. In the video, a vlogger teaches her fans how to cover up bruises with makeup after she has been beaten by her husband. There is a twist in the story as the husband enters the scene at the end of the video.
The action art performance themed "War on smog, we are taking action" was held by some environmental activists and volunteers on the commercial center and famous tourist spot Yangren Jie (Foreigners’ Street) in Nanan district, Chongqing municipality in Southwest China on Friday, Febuary 28.
Liao Guohe’s solo exhibition ----“Satisfaction Guaranteed”, the first-time all-round summary of his paintings in last 10 years, is held from November 14, 2014 to March 14, 2015 at Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, China.
A Straight Journey is a documentary of Chinese homosexual people. It is the first time for Chinese gays and lesbians to make their debut and speak out via one of the largest Chinese Internet service providers. Two Chinese photographers Masa and Mojo took a journey across 11 China's cities making portraits of 48 gays, lesbians and their families from 2014-2015.
In November 2015, Chinese LGBT activist Chen Qiuyan met with government officials in Beijing after months of campaigning to have the Ministry of Education remove textbooks which identify homosexuality as a mental disorder.
In 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of recognized mental disorders, after the Chinese government decriminalized consensual homosexual acts in 1997.
HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s legislature voted on Wednesday to ban all ivory sales by 2021, closing what activists called a major loophole in the global effort to end the trade and protect elephants from poaching.