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Kai-Oi Jay Yung is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice splinters sculpture, video, performance and installation. Her work seeks to enable the viewer to find new ways of looking and understanding the world in which we live.

Jay looks to the common threads of our shared human experience to explore fundamental questions of who we are and how we live our lives. “Essentially my work is about life’s stupidities, conundrums and incredible interconnections, how relentless living can be and how wonderment can hit you like a thunderbolt from the blue.”

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Alice Lee wrote a comment on the Guardian about Anna May Wong and the struggle of Chinese actors/actresses are facing now. Alice Lee’s play Dragon Lady: Being Anna May Wong was on this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

China’s forgotten star

Alice Lee

In 1905, a little Chinese girl, Wong Liu Tsong, was born in America. In the 1930s, she became the first American Chinese film star to achieve international acclaim – as the exquisite Anna May Wong. Although she made over 60 movies and mesmerised audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, she is now largely forgotten. Renowned for stealing scenes from her fellow actors, Wong never ascended to the exalted positions achieved by her fellow actresses Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. More surprising still, most modern Chinese people have never heard of her. I can’t help but wonder: is the reason an innate human tendency to bury sad stories? Or is it because we do not want to stir up a storm by examining the issues and realising how little we have advanced?

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From BFI website:

Chinese cinema seemed pole-axed in the 1990s by the shift from state control to the private sector, but it suddenly looks rejuvenated. With everything from big-budget spectacles to small, digital indies setting new creative highs, Tony Rayns has curated a selection of dazzling London premieres.

This selection of movies, all but one of them new to London and some well overdue, offers a spot-sample of terrific work in fiction and documentary, mainstream entertainment, arthouse challenges and avant-garde comedy. China still faces countless social and political problems, but its film culture has never been in better shape.

21st Century Chinese Cinema

 

BBC reports:

Detectives investigating the murders of a Chinese couple in Newcastle have offered a £5,000 reward to bring their killers to justice.

Zhen Xing Yang and girlfriend Xi Zhou, both 25, were found dead at the flat they shared on 9 August.

Det Supt Steve Wade, who is leading the inquiry, said police were keen for information on the couple’s last days.

He made a direct appeal to Britain’s Chinese community at a special news conference in London.

Mr Wade, speaking at Charing Cross Road police station with a Mandarin and Cantonese translator, said: “I am today able to announce that a £5,000 reward is being offered for information which leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

“Anyone with information about the murders of the two victims should contact Northumbria Police.”

The couple died after a “frenzied” knife attack at a flat in Croydon Road in the city’s West End.

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By Pin Lu from WaterInk.

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Performed by Alice Lee, directed by Sarah Calton

Edinburgh Fringe Festival Show @ C Soco
30th July - 25th August (not 12th), 5:10pm
C Soco, Studio 1, Chambers Street, Edinburgh (Venue 348)
Running time: 60 mins

Ticket price: £6.50-£9.50
Ticket booking: 0845 260 1234 www.edfringe.com

DRAGON LADY: BEING ANNA MAY WONG is about the 1930s film star Anna May Wong, the first Asian American actress to achieve international acclaim. During her life time, Anna May made over 60 movies and was much adored by audience on both sides of the Atlantic. Behind the glamorous film star’s façade laid a story that is both heart-breaking and inspirational.

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By Pin Lu, on WaterInk.

The Olympics has truly become showbiz when the headline is an adoring young girl lip-synced a song by another young girl at the opening ceremony. In the director’s mind, the girl with the best voice has to have the cutest complexion as well. The more baffling part is the director of music of the opening ceremony, Chen Qigang, only revealed this fact as one of the “behind the scene” stories when being interviewed on the radio, as if giving away some “making of” extra like those coming with a film’s DVD releases.
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Reported by Times Higher Education’s John Gill:

Loss of funding for scholarships ‘will harm Britain’s ability to attract the brightest’. John Gill writes

A decision to scrap an awards scheme supporting overseas research students will seriously harm universities’ ability to attract the best and brightest to Britain, vice-chancellors have said.

Universities UK issued the warning after the Higher Education Funding Council for England announced that it was pulling funding from the £15 million-a-year Overseas Research Student Awards Scheme (ORSAS), Britain’s biggest postgraduate scholarship scheme.

Hefce is to phase out funding from 2009-10, when the grant will be reduced by a third, with a 50 per cent cut the next year and no funding from 2011.

The move follows the Government’s recent decision to axe more than £2 million a year in funding for the Commonwealth scholarships scheme and to reduce funding for the Chevening scholarship programme, both of which support international students.

Read the full story.

 

Jiang Yuebing is a literature professor in Hubei province.

Beating the Stolen Gong

Jiang Yuebing

Some neighbors of our China are so much interested in Chinese culture that they decided most important ancient Chinese inventions like Chinese medicine or seismograph actually theirs. I appreciate their interest to our culture, yet wonder if they also found this piece, which is an ancient Chinese saying, “A stolen gong can’t be beaten!”

Because SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) were bold enough to beat the stolen gong. On July the 16th the SBS kinescoped secretly the first

rehearsal of the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games, and by the 30th more than 2 minutes of the kinescope was broadcasted by SBS.

Many Chinese people were angry at this astonishing behavior. And I just don’t understand why they did it. Yes their must offer their audiences the most attractive news, but why did they not think of the results of it? Couldn’t they see that they were beating the stolen gong just to discredit themselves?  As a Chinese I feel so pity for the poor SBS.

I am sure their disgraceful act will do no real harm to Beijing Olympic Games. I am sure Chinese people will enjoy the opening ceremony, and I believe people around the world would appreciate the performance too. I feel a bit at easy knowing that SBS has made their apology. We should accept that.
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China’s rapidly increasing economic growth as well as the lead-up to the Olympics has led to an explosion of construction and development in cities and villages and this urbanisation is reflected in the work of many Chinese artists including the photographer Zhou Jun. Born in 1965 in Nanjing, Zhou Jun graduated from the Department of Photography at the Art School of Nanjing Normal University. Three solo exhibitions have been held of his photographs in Beijing and Shanghai and he has participated in other group exhibitions in China, New York, Hong Kong and Melbourne. The Rossi & Rossi show, comprising some 15 works on sale in editions of ten, will be his first solo exhibition outside China.

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