ChinaFile Recommends
05.01.18Peppa Pig, Subversive Symbol of the Counterculture, in China Video Site Ban
Guardian
The latest subversive symbol in China is a small pink cartoon pig: Peppa Pig to be precise.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.22.18China Takes Aim at Hip-Hop, Saying ‘Low-Taste Content’ Must Stop
Reuters
China’s censors have a new target in a widespread clamp-down on popular culture: the country’s nascent hip-hop scene, which resonated with Chinese youth last year on hugely popular television show “Rap of China.”
ChinaFile Recommends
06.10.17Godfather of Beijing’s Indie Music Scene Dissects China’s Experimental Soundscape
China’s alternative-punk music scene has evolved from a genre that represented the rebelliousness of a niche group of well-off educated urbanites to one that’s international, hip, and popular. Chinese bands now play to sold-out gigs not only in old...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.30.17China’s Hottest New Boy Band Is Actually Made up of Five Androgynous Girls
Quartz
Acrush is made up of five women mostly in their early twenties, who all have edgy short hairstyles and dress like a bunch of boyish hearthrobs.
Books
03.27.17Wish Lanterns
If China will rule the world one day, who will rule China? There are more than 320 million Chinese between the ages of 16 and 30. Children of the one-child policy, born after Mao, with no memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre, they are the first net native generation to come of age in a market-driven, more international China. Their experiences and aspirations were formed in a radically different country from the one that shaped their elders, and their lives will decide the future of their nation and its place in the world.Wish Lanterns offers a deep dive into the life stories of six young Chinese. Dahai is a military child, netizen, and self-styled loser. Xiaoxiao is a hipster from the freezing north. Fred, born on the tropical southern island of Hainan, is the daughter of a Party official, while Lucifer is a would-be international rock star. Snail is a country boy and Internet-gaming addict, and Mia is a fashionista rebel from far west Xinjiang. Following them as they grow up, go to college, and find work and love, all the while navigating the pressure of their parents and society, Wish Lanterns paints a vivid portrait of Chinese youth culture and of a millennial generation whose struggles and dreams reflect the larger issues confronting China today. —Arcade Publishing{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
03.17.17Missile Row Drives Korean Culture Underground in China
Reuters
The mainland chill on Korean content that follows Seoul’s decision to deploy a missile defense system is driving Chinese fans to get their “K-culture” fixes on peer-to-peer platforms instead of mainstream sites.
Sinica Podcast
03.17.17Big Daddy Dough: Hip-hop and Macroeconomics in China
from Sinica Podcast
By day, Andrew Dougherty is a macroeconomist who manages a China research team for Capital Group, one of the world’s largest actively managed mutual funds. By night, he is Big Daddy Dough, creator of an album of parody hip-hop songs that explain...
Sinica Podcast
01.31.17Talking ’Bout My Generation: Chinese Millennials
from Sinica Podcast
Alec Ash, a young British writer who lives in Beijing, has covered “left-behind” children in Chinese villages, the “toughest high-school exam in the world,” and Internet live-streaming, among many other subjects. He is the author of Wish Lanterns,...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.27.16How George Michael’s Wham! Baffled Communist China and Inspired its Youth
Washington Post
It was a culture shock to rival the best of them: the coiffured hair and exuberant dancing of British pop stars, and the Communist Party’s dour uniformity
ChinaFile Recommends
12.23.16The Memes That Took Over China’s Internet in 2016
Quartz
This year's most popular memes reflected a more ruthless and aggressive—but also more fragile—China
ChinaFile Recommends
12.21.16Could Jane Zhang Become China’s First Global Pop Star?
BBC
Zhang's latest single breaks the mould of China's pop industry and could help her become its first global superstar
ChinaFile Recommends
11.30.16S.Korea Says China is Retaliating Against Its Missile-Defense System by Taking Aim at Korean Dramas
Quartz
China has turned down Korean stars’ applications to perform in the country and has not let any Korean movies screen in the mainland
ChinaFile Recommends
10.25.16Smiling Panda, Weeping Dragon: China’s Banksy Brings Life to City Sprawl
Guardian
Qi Xinghua, famous as a 3-D painter, says he wants to ‘add some fun to our lives’ by brightening up drab cityscapes
ChinaFile Recommends
10.14.16How Hong Kong's Cantopop Scene Went from Heartbreak to Protest
BBC
Cantonese pop music is formulaic, intensely emotional, strangely addictive and quintessentially Hong Kong. Now it is also becoming political.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.12.16Dating Shows are a Massive Hit in China--and They're Changing Traditional Views on Love and Marriage
Quartz
Is “I’d rather weep in a BMW than laugh on a bike” becoming the norm?
ChinaFile Recommends
09.20.16A New Literary Genre Critiques the Scariest Part of Life in China: Reality
Quartz
Enter chaohuan, the "ultra-unreal"
ChinaFile Recommends
09.20.16Once a Voice of Young China, Han Han Stakes Out a Different Path
New York Times
Han Han discusses his writings, the turns his life has taken and what people in the West fail to understand about China
Culture
08.11.15Japan’s Soft Power Leader in China is a Fat Blue Cartoon Cat
On July 28, costumed in vibrant colors, throngs of fans flocked toward the early morning light of Victoria Harbor, queueing outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center for the last day of the 17th Ani-Com & Games Hong Kong. The...
Sinica Podcast
07.27.15Beijing’s Great Leap Forward: Microbrew in China
from Sinica Podcast
Great Leap Brewing is an institution. As one of the earliest American-style microbreweries in China, not only has the company rescued us from endless nights of Snow and Yanjing, but it has also given us something uniquely Chinese with its assortment...
Media
07.23.15Why Taylor Swift’s 1989 Merchandise Is Not Going to Get Her Banned in China
On July 20, one of China’s largest e-commerce websites, JD.com, announced that it is partnering with popular American singer Taylor Swift to become the first authorized retailer of her merchandise in China. That news likely wouldn’t have turned...
Media
04.30.15Will China Ban Katy Perry?
On April 28, American pop singer Katy Perry gave her first-ever concert in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, the self-governing island which mainland China considers to be its sovereign territory. Tense relations between Taiwan and mainland China mean...
Sinica Podcast
03.02.15Keep in Touch, Nightman
from Sinica Podcast
In 1997, Beijing was smaller city, and Keep in Touch, Jamhouse, and Nightman were the hippest venues around. There was no traffic on the ring roads, and if you got tired of Chinese food you might take a trip to Fangzhuang to visit this Italian...
Sinica Podcast
06.02.14OMG, in Conversation With Jessica Beinecke
from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn interview Jessica Beinecke, host of the VOA-funded OMG Meiyu, a Chinese show on English slang that has earned Jessica hundreds of thousands of followers in China. Now the owner of her own production company, Jessica is...
Media
04.30.14Five Lessons From the Axing of ‘The Big Bang Theory’
It’s a plot twist few saw coming. Not long ago, China’s video streaming sites were trying to clean up years of copyright violations by paying big bucks to license popular U.S. television shows. For their part, Chinese fans had begun to abandon the...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.29.14China’s Global Popstars
BBC
The ‘Earth Music Project’ will train Ruhan Jia who is one of the first popstars to be actively promoted by the government.
Media
01.03.14Coming to Chinese Headlines in 2014
Chinese people have spent another year breathing dirty air, fretting about food safety, poking fun at corrupt officials, and complaining about tightening censorship—but as a discerning consumer of international news, you probably knew that already...
Sinica Podcast
12.27.13Sinica Goes to the Movies
from Sinica Podcast
As much as expats in China like to complain about the state of Chinese film and television, this week Kaiser and Jeremy remind us that there is a lot of great art out there, too, in a show that asks the critical question of: what is worth our...
Media
11.05.13China and Hollywood by the Numbers
Consider this: Hollywood studios now make more money selling movie tickets in China than in any other market outside North America. Wanda, China’s largest real estate developer, bought AMC, the second-largest movie theater chain in the United States...
Media
10.29.13Why “2 Broke Girls” Is All the Rage in China
In China’s battle between cupcakes and Communists, the cupcakes appear to be winning. While Chinese President Xi Jinping promotes the “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation with mixed success, the U.S. sitcom 2 Broke Girls has drawn Chinese...
Media
10.18.13Cross-Culture Fail Watch: “Blacklist” Bungles One-Child Policy
Chinese Internet users have a message for the screenwriters of The Blacklist: You’ve got a lot to learn about our country.The third episode of The Blacklist, a new NBC television drama in which the FBI and a former fugitive team up to fight...
Media
10.02.13ChinaFile Presents: Jia Zhangke on “A Touch of Sin”
On September 30 at Asia Society in New York City, film director and screenwriter Jia Zhangke and his wife, muse, and frequent leading lady on screen, actress Zhao Tao, joined Asia Society’s Film Curator La Frances Hui and journalist Emily Parker to...
Media
09.30.13China Watches “Breaking Bad”
Why do millions of Chinese care about a fictitious New Mexico meth cook? The soon-to-be-concluded television drama series Breaking Bad, which depicts embattled high school chemistry teacher Walter White’s transformation into a crystal...
Media
07.15.13A Rite of Passage to Nowhere
Tiny Times, a Chinese feature film set in contemporary Shanghai, made headline news on its opening day in late June by knocking the Hollywood blockbuster Man of Steel from its perch atop the domestic box-office and breaking the opening-day record...
Media
06.27.13Jackie Chan—The Young Master Comes of Age
Once in a while, if you’re lucky, and paying the right kind of attention, events align to give you a clear view of the future. In 1995, I was in Los Angeles staying with a friend who produced independent films and had the trade magazines Variety and...
Culture
06.18.13The Local Folk
In the liner notes of their 2009 début album, A Tale of Haifeng, Guangzhou-based indie folk band Wu Tiao Ren tinkered with the Communist party slogan “Lizu xiancheng, fangyan quanqiu,” which translates roughly: “See the world from our county’s...
Media
06.07.13Can Animation Cure What Ails the Chinese Movie Industry?
“Gold rush.” “1920s Hollywood.” “Faster than a speeding bullet.” These are a few ways that film professionals have described China’s booming movie industry. China’s film market, the second-largest in the world, grossed roughly U.S.$2.7 billion in...
Sinica Podcast
05.10.13Humor in China
from Sinica Podcast
Feel that your jokes have been falling flat lately? Enough that you’ve even started wondering whether China is a grand experiment in irony and deadpan humor? This week on Sinica, hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are delighted to invite guests...
ChinaFile Recommends
04.12.13The Silk Road Of Pop
Smoke Signal Projects
The film follows the trails left by a young Uyghur female named Ay and her interest in music, documenting her influences and portraying her musical idols in northwestern China.
Media
02.16.13NBA Star Debuts on Chinese Social Media, Fans Clamor: #I want to speak to Kobe#
Tea Leaf Nation editor David Wertime spoke on February 15 on Public Radio International’s The World about NBA star Kobe Bryant (@KobeBryant), who has recently opened an account on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. Listen to the full two-minute interview...
Media
01.09.13Why is a Mediocre, Low-Budget Comedy Taking China’s Box Office by Storm?
December 2012 saw hot competition in Chinese cinema. It began with Life of Pi, which was directed by Ang Li, an Oscar-winning director, followed by 1942, a historical movie by director Feng Xiaogang, and The Last Supper, by up-and-coming director Lu...
Media
12.24.12The Most Popular Chinese Web Searches of 2012
What did China search for in 2012? It wasn’t the hotly disputed Diaoyu Islands or the widely-watched London Olympics.On Baidu.com, China’s homegrown search engine commanding about eighty-three percent of the Chinese search market, the most popular...
Media
05.31.12Godwin’s Law with Chinese Characteristics
This winter writer-blogger-race car-driver Han Han found himself facing charges of plagiarism from celebrated fraud-buster Fang Zhouzi. Both Han and Fang have huge followings among China’s microbloggers. And their personal disagreement soon...
Media
05.24.12TV Show Catches Flak for its Criticism of Contestants Who Have Lived Abroad
The gameshow Fei Ni Mo Shu (Only You) has a pretty straightforward premise: a contestant steps onto a stage next to the host and introduces him/herself to a panel of twelve bosses of major companies who sit in highly extravagant throne-like chairs...
Media
05.18.12Hong Kong Movie Star Now a Motivational Speaker
Nicholas Tse—the famous young Hong Kong singer, actor, and musician—is known for portraying irresponsible young rebels. People think that's what he's like in real life. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology invited Tse to be a...
Culture
03.21.12A Rhythm of His Own
Huang Bo, founder and lead singer of the funk band The Verse, is a Chinese artist who looks to the West for musical and spiritual inspiration. Huang grew up in Changsha and moved to Guangzhou in the 1990s to study oil painting at the Guangzhou...
Sinica Podcast
08.06.11The China Rock Podcast
from Sinica Podcast
“Beijing has one of the best music scenes in the world,” one of our guests intoned, triggering a brawl that quickly split along Beijing-Shanghai lines. And while we’ll admit a case can be made for Shanghai too, there is no question that China has...
Media
01.21.96Jackie Chan, American Action Hero?
Whenever Jackie Chan leaves Hong Kong to make a public appearance in Shanghai, Taipei or Tokyo, or in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore or Seoul, hundreds—sometimes thousands—of his fans gather in a frenzy of adoration. Last June, Chan, the martial artist,...