LinkChinese UK News

BFI Southbank Jia Zhangke Season is showing four features and two documentaries made by the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. The Golden Lion-winning Still Life (三峡好人 2006) is released in the UK this month. Also in Jia Zhangke Season are Dong (东 2006), a companion documentary of Still Life, a new documentary Wu Yong (无用 2007) about Chinese fashion industry, and Jia’s early works including Unknown Pleasures (任逍遥 2002), The World (世界 2004), and Xiao Wu (小武 1997).

 

The new Saatchi Gallery in the Duke of York’s HQ will open with a contemporary Chinese art exhibition The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art.

Jane Macartney from the Times interviewed Zhang Xiaogang, a leading Chinese artist, whose works are in the new exhibition.

Zhang Xiaogang seems almost untouched by his rise to fame and fortune. An unassuming, bespectacled man of nearly 50, he is unimpressed that his paintings can now command between $500,000 and $1 million per canvas. And several times that at auction.

But he is excited that several of his paintings will be on show soon at the Saatchi collection in London as part of the China Now festival.

Read the full article.

 

Anna May Wong (黄柳霜), a thrid generation Chinese-Amercian, was the most admired Asian actor in western cinema, starring in a number of films both in Hollywood and Europe, from 1920s to 1960s. A new documentary about her, Frosted Yellow Willows - Anna May Wong, Her Life, Times and Legend, made by Elaine Mae Woo (胡美金), will be shown at National Portrait Gallery on Friday 8th Feb (020-7312 2463) and at BFI Southbank on Saturday 9th Feb (020-7928 3232).

Mattew Sweet writes about Anna Way Wong’s life on the Guardian: Snakes, salves and seduction:

In 1933, Doris Mackie of Film Weekly magazine visited Ealing studios to observe the shooting of a sweaty tropical melodrama called Tiger Bay, and found its star railing against cinema in general and Hollywood in particular. “Why is it that the screen Chinese is nearly always the villain?” asked Wong. “And so crude a villain. Murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass. We are not like that. How should we be, with a civilisation that is so many times older than that of the west?”

 

Michael Church meets Chinese pipa player Wu Man (吴蛮) and introduces her instrument and music on the Guardian:

An eighth-century Chinese poet likened the sound of the pipa, the leaf-shaped Chinese lute, to that of pearls falling on a jade plate. That may be accurate, but it’s only one of the effects the world’s leading player can extract from it: Wu Man’s pipa can crack jokes, sing sweetly, caress, howl or roar - sounds you’d scarcely dream it was possible to produce with 10 fingernails and four strings over a shallow rosewood box.

Read the full report.

Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic, with the Kronos Quartet and Wu Man, is relasesed on February 4 by Nonesuch.

 

Motherbridge of Love, a picture book based on a poem written for an adopted daughter, has been selected by the Time Magazine in its 2007 Top Children’s Book List. The poem, sent to the charity Mothers’ Bridge of Love (MBL) by an anonymous author, describes the

feeling of an adoptive mother towards her new daughter, and the girl’s the birth mother. “One became your guiding star; the other became your sun,” it reads. Xinran, founder of MBL, and a renowned author of several books about Chinese women’s lives, first published the poem in her Guardian column in 2004. In 2006, MBL and Barefoot Books decided to produce a picture book based on the poem, and asked the Canadian artist Josée Masse to illustrate the poem.

“Our organisation’s aim is to connect the adopted children from China to their cultural roots, and help them to fully enjoy their life here and recognise their identity,” Wendy Wu, CEO of MBL, is very happy that the book has been well received, and hopes the sale of the book would help the running of the charity. MBL is also planning to present the book to donors as part of a new fund raising initiative.

“The poem is so beautiful, the illustration is absolutely gorgeous. It can be enjoyed by parents and children of all families. And you will give the adopted children a little bit more support too,” she says.

 

Birmingham will host its first International Dance Festival from April to May next year, which the organisers promise will bring outstanding dance from across the globe, including Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, who will open the Festival, and a National Ballet of China production, choreographed by Akram Khan.

A joint venture between DanceXchange and Birmingham Hippodrome, the month-long Festival will take place across the city between 28 April and 24 May 2008.

International Dance Festival Birmingham will capture the imagination with a world-class programme that encompasses all styles of dance and expresses the youthful, diverse and energetic spirit of Birmingham.

It will bring outstanding dance from across the globe, showcasing the work of world-renowned dance companies including Kirov Ballet and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, alongside specially choreographed commissions and large-scale participatory and site-specific performances. Akram Khan MBE presents his new collaboration with National Ballet of China, bahok, as one of the Festival highlights.

Featuring some of the world’s greatest choreographers, International Dance Festival Birmingham promises to engage established audiences and newcomers alike through the sheer diversity of its programme.

Major new Festival for Birmingham gets City dancing!

 

The Terrocotta Army exhibition is so popular that British Museum is planning to extend the opening hour to midnight, even 24 hours a day, to accommodate the visitors. Almost all of the half million pre-book tickets have been sold. There are 500 on-the-day tickets every day. ‘The First Emperor: China’s Terrocotta Army’ exhibition is becoming the second most popular exhibition of British Museum, only beaten by the Tutankhamun exhibition in 1972.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

The British Museum is planning to take the unprecedented step of staying open 24 hours a day to meet the huge demand for its exhibition of Chinese terracotta warriors.

The demand to see the terracotta warriors is so great that the British Museum is planning 24-hour opening.

Total visitor numbers are expected to exceed 800,000 - more than twice the figure predicted when The First Emperor opened in September.

 

Some of the photos of Dong Yi’s Zheng Recital at the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. Photos courtesy of the concert organisers. Dong Yi is a graduate of Edinburgh University, and a postgraduate student of London School of Economics and Political Science. More about Dong Yi’s Zheng Recital at the Great Hall of the People, and the concert programme.

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Glamour of Jasmine: Dong Yi in Zheng Recital

Conductor: Hu Bing-xu

Accompaniment: China Philharmonic Orchestra

19:30, 8th Nov 2007

Auditorioum, The Great Hall of the People

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Dong Yi, an Edinburgh University economics graduate, is to give a concert at the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. Dong Yi will Zheng (筝), a traditional Chinese music instrument, accompanied by China Philharmonic Orchestra. Glamour of Jasmine will be the first time a female musician playing a traditional Chinese instrument to give a solo performance at the Great Hall of the People.

Only 25 years old, Dong Yi is a prominent musician in China and has many years of Zheng performance experiences. She is now studying a master degree in London School of Economics and Political Science.

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