ChinaFile Recommends
01.22.13An Overture from China Has Yet to Win Hollywood
New York Times
In September, China’s Dalian Wanda Group chairman and president said he would invest $10 billion in the U.S. To judge from the deal-making pace, it may take a while.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.22.13Crime With Chinese Characteristics
Wall Street Journal
A review of “The Civil Servant’s Notebook,” the first book by popular novelist Wang Xiaofang to be translated into English.
Culture
01.17.13
An Alternative Top Ten
Most accounts of the last year in Chinese cinema are dominated by films that were made for the ever-expanding domestic box office, and the local film industry’s struggle for screen time in competition with Hollywood imports.
On the one hand, we...
Culture
01.16.13
Hong Kong’s Bard of the Everyday
I have your words, that you put down on paperbut nothing at hand to return, so I write downpapaya. I cut one open: so many dark points, so many undefined things On Sunday, January 6, when Leung Ping-kwan, author of these lines,...
Culture
01.11.13
Top Floor Circus
At nine o’clock on a recent Monday morning, Lu Chen, the slender and polite lead singer of Top Floor Circus, the first rock band to sing in Shanghainese—and a man whose transformative stage persona sees him swearing, stripping nearly naked, and...
Culture
01.10.13Punks Are All Sissies - Lyrics
“Punks Are All Sissies” is a song by the Shanghai rock band Top Floor Circus, off of their third album Timmy Revisits Lingling Road 93 (2005). The album generally is seen as a parody of punk music, making references to Bob Dylan, GG Allin, a Beijing...
Culture
01.10.13Be a Nice Guy - Lyrics
“Be a Nice Guy” is a song by the Shanghai rock band Top Floor Circus off of their fourth album 13 Classic Hits of Shanghai Pop Rock (2010). The album celebrates the everyday life of the Shanghainese. Lu Chen, the lead singer of the group, sings the...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.10.13A Retailer Discovers China’s New ‘It‘ Girl: Grandpa
Wall Street Journal
Retired Farmer Becomes Fashion Sensation; He's 5-8, Thin and Looks Great in Crimson
Media
01.09.13
Why 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...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.03.13China, the American Press, and the State Department
New Yorker
It’s time for the State Department to take up the matter of American reporters in China, and Chinese reporters in America.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.02.13A Meaty Tale, Carnivorous and Twisted
New York Times
Nobel laureate Mo Yan's latest novel to be issued in English, “Pow!,” is a red-toothed fantasia about meat production and meat consumption.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.31.12Telling China's Stories Through Food
Seattle Times
Former Associated Press reporter Audra Ang, talks about To the People Food is Heaven, her journey through a complicated, sometimes maddening, sometimes breathtaking society.
Caixin Media
12.28.12
Uncertain Future for Architectural Treasures
Nestled between mountains and a winding river in a scenic corner of Shanxi province is Zhongyang County, the home of an exquisite Confucian temple built during the Ming dynasty.The colorful wooden temple graced this idyllic valley for hundreds of...
Out of School
12.24.12
Politics and the Chinese Language
The awarding of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to the Chinese novelist Mo Yan has given rise to energetic debate, both within China’s borders and beyond. Earlier this month, ChinaFile ran an essay by Chinese literature scholar Charles Laughlin...
Video
12.20.12
Stars in the Haze
Flying kites is the quintessential Chinese pastime. But “wind zithers” or “paper sparrow hawks,” as they are known in Chinese, also have a long history as tools. Over millennia, Chinese have used them for measuring the wind, gauging distances, and...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.19.12Chinese Directors Call for Censorshp Reform
Hollywood Reporter
Chinese filmmakers are calling for a system of classifying films according to their suitability for audiences of different ages.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.17.12CCTV Airs “V for Vendetta”
China Digital Times
When CCTV aired, uncut V for Vendetta about an anti-totalitarian masked crusader, viewers couldn’t believe their eyes.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.13.12Why Salman Rushdie Should Pause Before Condemning Mo Yan
Guardian
Mo Yan, China's first Nobel laureate for literature, has been greeted withsome extraordinary hostility in the west. This week Salman Rushdie described him as a "patsy" for the Chinese government...
Culture
12.11.12
Sheng Keyi on Mo Yan: “Literature Supersedes Politics and Everything Else”
In a recent conversation at the Asia Society, novelist Sheng Keyi said she felt the critism of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize was unjustified. The controversy, she said, arises from Mo Yan’s politics rather than his literature, “and I think to critique him on...
Culture
12.11.12Yu Jie: Awarding Mo Yan the Nobel Prize Was a “Huge Mistake”
Mo Yan accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm on December 10.The 57-year-old novelist often writes stories based on memories of his village childhood, and his work and his political views have triggered wide debate. In...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.09.12Mo Yan and the Hazards of Hollow Words
New Yorker
In Chinese, there are an impressive number of ways to describe saying nothing at all. When a person is determined to speak at length but not in depth, he can embark on a long jog of feihua—literally, wasted words—or perhaps pass the time at...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.06.12Perry Link: Does This Writer Deserve the Prize?
New York Review of Books
On October 11 Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2012 will go to the fifty-seven-year-old Chinese writer Guan Moye, better known as Mo Yan, a pen name that means “...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.06.12A Place for Asia
Dissent
Pankaj Mishra, acclaimed novelist and historian of Asia’s modern development, would have none of it. In a scathing essay published in the London Review of Books, Mishra gutted Ferguson for his dishonestly humanitarian...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.06.12Nobel Literature Winner Skirts Support for Dissident
Wall Street Journal
Nobel literature prize winner Mo Yan dodged requests Thursday to repeat comments supportive of Chinese countryman and jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, and said censorship may be necessary to stop the dissemination of untrue rumors and insults but that...
The NYRB China Archive
12.06.12
Does This Writer Deserve the Prize?
from New York Review of Books
On October 11 Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2012 will go to the fifty-seven-year-old Chinese writer Guan Moye, better known as Mo Yan, a pen name that means “...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.05.12China Dismisses Nobel Demands for Liu's Release
Agence France-Presse
China rejected a call from 134 Nobel laureates for the release from prison of dissident 2010 Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.
Media
12.04.12
“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” Hits the Road
Debut filmmaker Alison Klayman has been on a global tour with her documentary—Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry—a film about one of China’s most provocative artists and activists, which this week, was named one of fifteen films put on a short list to be...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.30.12China Bans Rowdy Game Show After Mother's Rant about Turning her Daughter into 'Sexy Goddess' of China
Associated Press
China suspended a broadcaster after an unaired segment of a TV game show leaked online showing a shouting match with a woman who calls her daughter the next Lady Gaga.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.29.12China Will Top U.S. as Biggest Film Market in the World by 2020: Study
Hollywood Reporter
Box office haul in China, which now stands as the second-largest film market in the world after Japan, will surpass that in the U.S. by 2020, according to Ernst & Young.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.28.12Howard French’s Images of Shanghai
New Yorker
The writer who can really shoot—the dream of generations of penny-pinching newspaper editors—is the rarest of creatures. Because I’ve failed at it enough times to know the difference between snapping off a few frames between interviews and really...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.28.12State Meddling Stifles China's Film Industry
New York Times
The release of Lu Chuan's latest film was delayed until after the recent leadership transition. The film depicts the bloody machinations of the first Han emperor's wife.
Culture
11.27.12
Remember to Tell the Truth
The recording of memory brings history to life and creates a legacy of its own. In 2010, documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang launched the Memory Project to try to shine a light on the long-shrouded memories of one of modern China’s most traumatic...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.26.12Ai's Song: Elton John Praises Artist in Beijing
Wall Street Journal
Elton John struck a note of support for dissident artist Ai Weiwei at his show in Beijing, but did he also strike a blow at China’s live music scene?
ChinaFile Recommends
11.24.12China's 'Beijing Blues' Wins at Taiwan Film Fest
Associated Press
Director Gao Qunshu's drama is about a Beijing police detective's battle against crime with a squad of plainclothes crime-hunters.
Culture
11.21.12
A New Tower of Babel
Xu Bing, the renowned Chinese artist whose many laurels include a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and an appointment as vice president of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, has long demonstrated a fascination with the written word.His...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.19.12The Headache of Mo Yan, China’s Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
Washington Post
Mo Yan had a tuxedo made for the December 10 prize gala in Stockholm and is studying the waltz, in case he's invited to dance.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.19.12Getting Over Ai Weiwei
Randian
There are, though, significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within China. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational and often bombastic stance can be readily digested within Western...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.17.12The Saturday Profile: Peng Liyuan, First Lady of China
New York Times
The top pop-folk icon is beloved for a glass-cracking soprano and her range of roles, from Tibetan yak herder to stiff-lipped general.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.11.12China Film Regulator: Don't Blame us for Hollywood Hiccups
Wall Street Journal
Beijing says it was the market that decided to bar imported films from domestic cinemas this summer, not film regulators.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.11.12China, at Party Congress, Touts its Cultural Advances
New York Times
Party guidance is the "soul” of China's moves to privitize and promote industries that can spread soft power abroad.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.08.12China Museum Builder Lets History Speak
Los Angeles Times
Fan Jianchuan, an obsessive collector and wealthy developer, uses his massive museum cluster to carefully display objects related to touchy subjects.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.04.12Culture Books Han Suyin obituary
Guardian
Chinese-born author best known for her 1952 book A Many-Splendoured Thing. The film of her 1952 book A Many-Splendoured Thing may have been just a classic weepie, but the original novel shocked Hong Kong with its tale of her love affair...
Media
11.02.12
Chinese Movie Mogul Promises New Party Leaders Will Open Market to Hollywood
A wise old cartoon turtle in Kung Fu Panda advises Po, the portly black and white star of the 2004 DreamWorks Animation blockbuster film, not to fret about honing his fighting skills, but rather to focus on the moment and do his...
Viewpoint
10.29.12
Hollywood Film Summit Draws Chinese Movie Moguls
LOS ANGELES—Hollywood and Chinese movie makers and industry hangers-on will gather Tuesday at the third annual Asia Society U.S.-China Film Summit on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles.At a gala dinner Tuesday night, organizers...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.12For RZA, Hip-Hop Was Just a Prelude to Kung Fu
New York Times
“The Man With the Iron Fists,” which RZA directed and stars in, is a martial-arts epic set in a mythical Chinese feudal state, where a dispute between a monarch and a nefarious gang draws in a rogue British soldier (played by Russell Crowe), a madam...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.20.12Video: A Visit with Ai Weiwei
New Yorker
Earlier this year, we invited the artist Ai Weiwei to visit the United States to take part in the New Yorker Festival, held in early October. At the time, the Chinese government had barred Ai from traveling abroad—an unofficial form of punishment...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.12Is Mo Yan a Stooge for the Chinese Government?
Rectified.name
Even before the Swedish Academy announced Mo Yan as the 2012 Nobel Literature Prize winner, the Chinese internet was abuzz with discussion of his work and his relationship with the Chinese government.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.12China in Hollywood, Hailed and Investigated
New York Times
Movie mogul Han Sanping soon will receive an Asia Society award even as U.S. investigators' continue to question Hollywood studios' dealings with Han's company.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.12.12Mo Yan Calls for Liu Xiaobo’s Release
New York Times
Mo Yan, the new Nobel laureate who strenuously avoided antagonizing the Communist Party during much of his literary career, stepped into a political minefield on Friday by calling for the release of Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned writer and...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.12.12Review: Ai Weiwei at the Hirshhorn
New York Times
Mr. Ai, who seems to lose his sense of humor only rarely, has characterized his increasingly dangerous jousting with the Chinese government as a kind of performance art.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.11.12Mo Yan Mines a Deep Well
New York Times
Mo Yan's work recalls a Soviet dissident's quip that in his country “reality and satire are the same.”
Media
10.11.12
Netizens React to Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize
Upon hearing the news that novelist Mo Yan was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, a flurry of messages about the fifty-seven-year-old Shandong native circulated on weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, expressing decidedly mixed opinions...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.11.12Mo Yan and China's “Nobel Complex”
New Yorker
In awarding the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mo Yan, the Swedish Academy has recognized one of China’s best-known writers, and also fulfilled one of the Chinese government’s most enduring pursuits: a politically tolerable Nobel laureate.&...
Features
10.11.12
Will Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize Finally Mean Better Book Sales Abroad?
Literature in translation in the United States has wide but shallow roots, making English language stars out of the likes of Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Haruki Murakami, but leaving most of China’s writers struggling to take hold. Now, veteran...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.11.12Nobel Prize to Novelist Mo Yan
New York Times
The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday that it had awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to the Chinese author Mo Yan, the cultural high point of a week of accolades to scientists, writers and peacemakers.
The NYRB China Archive
10.11.12
An Honest Writer Survives in China
from New York Review of Books
A little over a year ago, I went with the Chinese writer Yu Hua to his hometown of Hangzhou, some one hundred miles southwest of Shanghai, and realized that his bawdy books might not be purely fictional; their characters and situations seemed to...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.10.12DreamWorks to Make 2-3 Films a Year in China, Eventually
Hollywood Reporter
"Kung Fu Panda" creators will ramp up a partnership with Chinese state-run media funds, slowly.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.08.12Review of Ai Weiwei at the Hirshhorn
Wall Street Journal
Ai Weiwei will probably be regarded as the most important artist of the past decade. He is certainly its most newsworthy and arguably its most inspiring. Over the repressions of Chinese authorities, he has used a wide range of resources to broadcast...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.05.12Fu Manchu Returns
Wall Street Journal
Fear of China is back. But it's a nebulous fear, and this creates both an opportunity and an obstacle for the male and female anti-heroes of Christopher Buckley's latest look at the surreal world of lobbyist, the uneven but occasionally...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.03.12Why China Lacks Gangnam Style
New Yorker
In China, the Gangnam phenomenon carries a special pique. It has left people asking, Why couldn’t we come up with that? China, after all, dwarfs Korea in political clout, money, and market power, and it cranks out more singers and dancers in a...