News and Updates

Creative Industry Expo Opens in Beijing

The Third China Beijing International and Creative Industry Expo (ICCIE) opened in Beijing December 17, 2008. The main exhibition was held at the China International Exhibition Center under the theme “Cultural Creativity and Service Trade.”

The ICCIE serve as an international platform promoting cutting-edge enterprises and Chinese brands with proprietary intellectual property rights, while introducing international cultural and creative industry into China.

Divided into 17 exhibition halls under different themes, the expo featured a Cultural and Creative Industry Exhibition Hall, Broadcasting, Film and Television Exhibition Hall, Tourist Attraction and Commodity Exhibition Hall, and more.

The Taipei Cultural and Creative Industry Exhibition came into the spotlight on the first exhibition day. Sixty-four Taiwan companies amazed visitors with a host of creative products, including a long-lasting popular hand puppet.

The leading forum of this expo was themed “Chinese Culture and World Civilizations,” aiming to explore the sustainable development of the Chinese Culture Creative Industry with the integration of Chinese culture and world civilization.

Events during the four-day expo included ten presentation and trade fairs aimed at promoting the Cultural Creative Industry at home and abroad. In addition, the Broadway opera Aida and the art performance Flamenco Passion were staged.

 

Beijing, Taipei Museums Host Joint Exhibition

Artefacts from Beijing’s Palace Museum and Taipei’s “National Palace Museum” will be brought together in a first-ever joint exhibition within three to five years, according to the China Daily.

In a December 22, 2008, report, the newspaper cited improved cross-Straits relations as an inspiration for the joint exhibition.

The 43-year-old Taipei museum has 650,000 antiques moved from Beijing’s Palace Museum in 1948–49. The 83-year-old Beijing museum, better known as the Forbidden City, houses more than one million items.

Hsu Hsiao-te, head of the Cultural Arts Fund at the Taipei museum, said the museum is planning the joint exhibition, while attending the International and Creative Industry Expo in Beijing on December 19, 2008.

“It has been an aspiration cherished by our curators of the past and today,” Hsu said.

The Taipei museum has been assured that its artefacts will be returned to Taipei after their presentation on the mainland.

 

Militia Women to Join 2009 National Day Parade

Young militia women in Beijing are to take part in the military parade to mark the  60th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China in 2009, China Daily reported on December 11, 2008.

Posters advertising enrolment of young women into the militia can be seen around Chaoyang District, the English language newspaper said, quoting a local newspaper.

Young women, aged 17–25, who hold a Beijing hukou (permanent residence certificate), and who are between 1.63 metres and 1.75 metres tall may apply.

Those selected will have to complete a 10-month military training course before they can march on Tian’anmen Square on October 1, 2009.

The celebration of National Day usually includes a military parade once every tenth year since the People’s Republic of China was founded.

 

Works of Top Chinese Painters Exhibited in Beijing

More than 200 oil paintings by some of China’s best oil painters are being displayed at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC or Meishuguan). The exhibition opened December 9, 2008.

The Pursuing the Source and Seeking the Truth exhibition is sponsored by the China Arts Institute. It has assembled 230 representative works of young, veteran and senior Chinese artists. Through their approach to realism, participating artists hope to restore the essential values of truth, honesty and aesthetics to Chinese art.

 

Beijing Begins Annual Inspections of Cultural Sites

Beijing will begin its yearly inspections of its cultural relics to better safeguard its history, cultural heritage protection officials said on December 9, 2008, according to a CRI (China Radio International) report.

The first-phase work, budgeted at three million yuan (US$438,000), covers 20 of the city’s 370 cultural heritage sites. Of the 370 sites, 104 are under State-level protection.

The city has spent more than 1 billion yuan (US$146 million) in restoring cultural relics in the past ten years, the Beijing Municipal Administration for Cultural Heritage said.

It went towards protecting Beijing’s traditional architectural presence and to the renovation of major heritage sites such as Shichahai, Nanluogu Xiang, Nanchizi Jie, Qianmen and Liulichang Jie.

From 2008 to 2015, the Beijing Municipal Government has allocated 1.2 billion yuan (US$175.2 million) for preservation efforts.

 

European Film Festival in Beijing

The first European Film Festival in China opened in Beijing on December 6, 2008, featuring the Oscar-winning French film La Môme. According to CRI, 25 European films were screened in the following two weeks, one from each European Union (EU) member.

The festival was organized by the French Embassy and the EU Delegation to China.

France currently heads the EU Commission. “As an initiator, we hope the festival will be repeated in the coming years,” said Ambassador Herv Ladsous of France.

“We have selected the best commercial successes from the past two years to show Chinese people how we live in Europe,” said EU Ambassador Serge Abou. “I’m sure this will give Chinese audiences a taste of European cinema and life.”

Matti is the film Finland brought for the festival. Finnish Ambassador Antti Kuosmanen said at the opening celebration: “The film, Matti, may be strange to Chinese audiences, but I hope they will like it.”

Other films included White Palms from Hungary, Dot.com from Portugal, Welcome Home from Austria, Seamstresses from Bulgaria and Pandora from Greece.

The showings are free at the French Cultural Center, the Cervantes Institute, the Italian Cultural Institute and the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art. All films are in their original languages with English and Chinese subtitles.

“We have started making plans for the second film festival in China next year, and I hope it will be held annually,” said Abou.

 

Paralympic Spirit Lives On

When Liu Juan and her friends in the Beijing disabled table tennis team first went to the Beijing Sports and Vocational Training Centre for the Disabled, she felt like “flying” up and down the ramps in her wheelchair, reported China Daily on December 4, 2008.

Every staircase at the centre has a wheelchair ramp and special paths for the blind. In the dormitory, there are flashing bells for people with a hearing disability.

“It is very convenient and cool,” said Liu.

The Beijing Paralympics, held in September, seen as a turning point in the development of sport for the disabled, promoting the construction of barrier-free environments and also a communitywide Paralympic spirit.

China’s 332-strong team dominated the event, topping the medals table with 89 golds, more than double its nearest challenger, Great Britain.

The centre was built by the Beijing Municipal Government two years ago at Lucheng in Beijing’s Daxing District.

In a related development, the China Disabled Persons’ Federation has reported that, 257,800 disabled people have received rehabilitation in the past five years and as a result, more than 88 percent of them have significantly improved their daily lives.

 

Peking Opera Master Biopic Starring Zhang Ziyi Debuts in Beijing

The global premiere of Forever Enthralled, Chen Kaige’s biopic of Peking Opera legend Mei Lanfang, debuted on December 2, 2008 in Beijing.

The movie, starring actress Zhang Ziyi of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, and Hong Kong star Leon Lai, opened on December 5 in Chinese theatres.

It depicts the life and career of Mei, a friend of Charlie Chaplin.

Mei (1894–1961), a household name in China, was the first to advance Peking Opera to the rest of the world. He is also remembered for his patriotic refusal to perform from 1937to 1945 when Beijing was occupied by the Japanese.

Chen is renowned for his Palme d’Or-winning movie Farewell My Concubine (1993).

 

Trance DJ Returns

After a successful tour of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in 2004, DJ Sasha is back in Beijing on his worldwide tour promoting his latest album Invol2ver.

This year’s tour saw the prince of progressive house drop tunes in Beijing and Shanghai from December 5–6, 2008, according to China Daily.

As a DJ and production figure in trance and progressive circles, Sasha (Alexander Coe), from North Wales, became famous in the early 1990s for residencies at clubs like Shelly’s and the Hacienda.

He is the biggest star in a land where club DJs are famed. He is known for his DJ sets, but also his productions and remixes, which have essentially pioneered the scene known today as “Epic House,” led by artists such as B.T., Blue Amazon and Paul van Dyke. He also plays his own records such as Be as One, a tune which crashed the top 10 upon release last year and which has won kudos from several major radio stations in China.

Fickle Beijing clubbers will get the chance to feel the magic of Sasha’s Invol2ver. It highlights 13 heavily edited tracks that allow Sasha to frame a scene much like a director. Full of nuances, Sasha’s creative brilliance scouts the likes of Thom Yorke and Eraser. Also worthy of mention is "Apparat’s Arcadia," a captivating melody, with airy vocals throughout the track; Apparat is a brilliant producer taking notes that are Radiohead-ish in quality.

At this point, Sasha reveals his darker side with the acid-influenced track from Home Video That You Might, then blends effortlessly with Ladytron’s Destroy Everything You Touch, an ecstatic tune. Sasha takes the synth pop, robotic track and turns it into a club bomb. Limited edition copies include a second CD of Sasha exclusive remixes.

 

206 Million Chinese Read News on Internet

About 206 million Chinese, or 68.6 percent of the country’s Internet users, are using the Web as their main source of news, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) reported.

The CASS, a top academic institution, released the figure in the Blue Book of China’s Economy (2009) report.

Disasters such as the snow storms during the Lunar New Year holiday, the massive earthquake that struck southwestern Sichuan Province in May as well as the Olympics stimulated growth of the online news population, said Zhu Huaxin, editor of the report.

At the end of June, Chinese Internet users hit 253 million, the most in the world. The latest official figures put users at 290 million, 80 million more than in 2007, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC).

About 80 percent of the users look for information and news through the Internet. Around 60 percent of them use search engines.

CNNIC found that of China’s Internet users, 69 percent are younger than 30.

 

New Year Cards for Quake-Hit Children

As the Chinese New Year on January 26, 2009 draws near, the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation issued a postcard on December 22, 2008, to pool greetings and financial help for children affected by the May 12 earthquake, according to Xinhua.

The postcard, featuring next year’s zodiac animal sign, the “ox,” will be sold for 10 yuan (US$1.50) each at Beijing post offices and on the project’s Web site at: www.xinchangcheng.org. Each postcard will include a maple leaf used at the Closing Ceremony of this September’s Beijing Paralympic Games.

Chen Hongtao, manager of the CFPA New Great Wall Project, said at the launch ceremony, “We’re not only raising money for the children, but also trying to send them our love and care.”

Each envelope bears the name and address of a child in need of help, Chen said, noting each letter involves a 2.4 yuan postal charge.

More than 40,000 cards have been booked by companies, universities, elementary schools and individuals.

 

Hong Kong Film Premieres

Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s romantic comedy All about Women, premiered in Beijing on December 11, 2008, a week earlier than scheduled for a bigger-than-expected share of the local year-end movie market.

Director Tsui joined cast members including Zhou Xun, Kwai Lun-mei, Zhang Yuqi, Sheng Chang, Stephen Fung and Eddie Peng during the gala. Various things were tailored for the event, including questions and answers and a hilarious trophy presentation ceremony. Each of the trophies was named after a flick that's part of the New Year movie season, such as Yip Man, and Forever Enthralled. Facing hot competition in the market, Tsui says he always wants to try his best to entertain movie-goers.

“Actually, I think December is the time to have fun. Many pictures are to hit the big screen this month, such as If You Are the One, Desire of the Heart and Red Cliff. All filmmakers want to make our audiences happy. So that’s why I think that the more movies, the merrier. Let’s just celebrate this December together.”

Tsui even performed a Peking Opera excerpt on stage after he was awarded the trophy of Forever Enthralled, a biopic about the life of Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang.