By a pond inside one of the entrances to Beijing’s Chaoyang Park lies a cluster of one and two storey red pyramid-shaped buildings. Sculptures of Gandhi and Lincoln and other famous figures sit in the quiet woods nearby. This is Yuan Xikun’s Jin Tai Art Museum.
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.
Since the 1980s, revitalizing the economy has always been the country's development strategy. Although China's economy has grown rapidly in just twenty years, attracting worldwide attention, environmental destruction has also become a problem. For example, the Fu Nan River in Chengdu, like many rivers nationwide, is severely polluted.
According to the World Health Organization, China is home to two-thirds of the world's women who wear IUD devices. This is a form of contraception that was developed after World War II, and in essence, comes from discrimination against women. In 2014, artist Zhou Wenjing made a work of IEDs, which was recently exhibited in Beijing.
Recently, residents in the coastal city of Ningbo rallied to oppose the expansion of a plant that produces paraxylene (PX), a potentially hazardous chemical used in the production of plastics and polyester. Protesters organized using microblogs and other social media and turned out over several days in demonstrations of people power that sometimes met with violent confrontations with police.
In early January, constructions workers in Wuhan, China staged a Gangnam Style protest in front of their employer's building. Using the Gangnam Style dance, the men sought to bring media attention to their mounting unpaid wages.
Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
"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.
By throwing away 1,000 pure gold rice grains into a river, a Chinese artist, who wanted to raise public awareness about food waste, found his behavior was not well received by the general public who called the performance "fake art and a waste of money."
Thich Nhat Hanh reads his poem "For Warmth" in Vietnamese, Krista Tippett reads the translation in English, excerpted from the episode "Mindfulness, Suffering, and Engaged Buddhism."
More than 30 South Korean college students shaved their heads in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on Tuesday to protest Japan's decision to release water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.
Police periodically dispersed crowds, who chanted and held placards but did not stop the event from taking place, though there is an anti-pandemic ban on gatherings larger than 10 people.
In June 2011, the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau demanded a total of over 12 million yuan (US$1.85 million) from Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd in unpaid taxes and fines, and accorded three days to appeal the demand in writing. According to Ai's wife, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd has hired two Beijing lawyers as defense attorneys.
Zuoxiao Zuzhou is a Chinese singer whose accented, croaky voice is hardly ever in tune. But for his fans he's the voice of a generation — one of the very few voices who dare to speak out. After a collaboration, Cowboy Junkies member Michael Timmins called him "China's Leonard Cohen."
In early July 2012, after the Chinese college entrance examination results were announced, the media found that many colleges and universities had gender bias on the admitted scores, and the maximum difference between men and women was up to 40 points. This finding aroused widespread concern and dissatisfaction from the public.
Zhuang Huan invited more than 40 men - laborers, fishermen, construction workers––who had recently migrated to Beijing from other areas of China to participate. Zhang Huan said, “In order to find these workers, I visited many of the shacks where they live.”
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.
Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) was registered in 2009 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a non-profit international membership organization with representative offices in China, India, Pakistan, and London. It has more than 400 member organizations around the world, mainly including cotton growers, cotton textile enterprises, and retail brands. The group aims to promote what it calls "Better Cotton" around the world.
Beijing-based artist Liu Yi is working on a series of black-and-white portraits he knows will never be shown in a Chinese gallery. His varied subjects — men and women, young and old, smiling and pensive — have one thing in common: They are Tibetans who have set themselves on fire to protest repressive Chinese rule.
As the No. 59 bus hurtled down Ratchadamnoen Klang road in Bangkok's Old Town, its passengers diverted their attention from the intense midday heat to a small crowd on the concrete below. About 25 people were marching and chanting, photographers scuttling in front of them.
The immediate prototypes of Zhang Xiaogang’s Big Family series are formal group photographic portraits from the 1950’s and 60’s, including those of Zhang’s own family, a source of the painter’s “endless reveries.” From these old black-and-white pictures Zhang Xiaogang derived the series’ paradigmatic features: a subdued, nearly monochromatic palette; a thickly layered but flat surface, without overt evidence of brushwork; a general compositional restric
On March 9, 2018, China's largest feminist platform "Voice of Women's Rights"'s Weibo account and WeChat official account were permanently suspended. Before being blocked, its Weibo account had 180,000 fans and the Wechat account had 70,000 fans. In order to retrieve the account, the staff of "Voice of Women's Rights" conducted a long-term struggle to defend their rights.
Public transport in South Korea, Kyoung-seok says, is not designed for disabled people: "A normal journey can take twice or three times as long for a disabled person, compared to a non-disabled person." Kyoung-seok was involved in a hang-gliding accident in 1984, making him paraplegic at the age of 24.
Female staff members at a new shop in Osaka, Japan are being encouraged to wear badges to indicate when they’re on their period to tackle the stigma surrounding menstruation in the country.
Women working at the Michi Kake store, which sells an array of female sexual and menstrual health products, do not have to take part in the scheme, but those that do will pin one of the “period badges” next to their regular name tags.
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Five Chinese feminists have been arrested for planning to protest against sexual harassment. They face five to ten years in jail. This post explains the background to the case, and suggests ways that other activists around the world can show solidarity.
It may have been a while since you’ve set foot in an internet cafe, but a pop-up one on the Lower East Side offering free tea on top of free wifi is well worth a visit for a lesson in online freedoms.