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Life Archives       Mandarin Musical Brings China to Broadway The Broadway opening of the Mandarin version of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change—performed in English on Broadway for ten years—marked a momentous occasion...         Not That China: The Fastest Sofa Ever "Not That China" is an irregular column that explores subjects related to the word "China" but completely unrelated to the People's Republic of China.         Gated: The Rise of Urban Exclusion in China When the golden zebra gate lifts, I am ushered into a quiet enclave of residences — a pocket of cloned houses, manicured lawns and pruned shrubbery...         DVD Tourism: How to Harvest a Collection Suffer through the next few months without viewing a single movie. Take some of the money you've saved and buy a plane ticket to China...         U.S. Congressman Calls China 'Frankenstein' At a U.S. Congress Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday, California Representative Dana Rohrabacher referred to China as "the Frankenstein that now threatens us."         Memoir of a Tree-Planting Mission in Inner Mongolia The Jane Goodall Institute-Shanghai, Roots and Shoots, a foreign affiliated non-profit organization has agreed to team up for fund-raising and research purposes with NPO Green Life... enemy?         'No Torch in Tibet': The Protest at Mount Everest On April 25, five Americans staged the most high-profile Tibetan freedom protest at the base of the highest mountain in the world.         So Funny I Forgot to Laugh: A Look at Chinese Sarcasm What Oscar Wilde once called "the lowest form of wit but the highest form of humor" doesn't constitute wit or humor in China. There is no Chinese word for sarcasm.         'He's Not Chinese' A collective sigh of relief passed through China late Tuesday when police identified the shooter who killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech University as a South Korean.         Game Over for China's Internet Cafés In America, it's "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." In China, it's "the internet doesn't ruin people, internet cafés ruin people."         Should China Care About Richard Gere? How did the American Gigolo become Tibet's best friend and China's worst enemy?       back to top          Sound Archives       Critical Terms: Krautrock Krautrock is a term that surfaced in the British music press in the late 1960s to refer to a new style of German rock...         Dino Beach Rock Festival Lineup This summer's Rock It festival, Shanghai's only outdoor rock festival, takes place over three days at the end of the month, June 29—July 1         Shanghai Live Earth Lineup Unveiled, Earth Doomed Tickets went on sale for the Shanghai stage of the Live Earth concerts, and it seems that the event organizers have gone out of their way to make it an abominable suckfest.         Sound: New Releases June 12, 2007 A Traveling Wilburys box set, a John Lennon covers album for Darfur, a new Queens of the Stone Age disc and a DMX greatest hits album all hit the stores this week.         Album: The Re-Tros: Cut Off! Here's my half-serious, half-joking theory: The lack of older siblings in China has had a devastating effect on the musical taste of the populace therein.         Interview: DJ tootekool For the two-year anniversary, Saturday's event brings in both DJs and VJs from past micro incarnations but also offers something new to the Pirates Bar space.         Joecy Wu of Yuyintang Warehouse Amid rumors of the fate of Yuyintang Warehouse, it seems the cagey Yuyintang concert promoters have again found another way to bring Shanghai the best in original live music.         Sound: New Releases June 5, 2007 Something for everyone this week: Paul McCartney and Chris Cornell offer solo albums, Marilyn Manson has a new disc, the Boss is out with a live album and Poison does rock covers.         Notes from the Chinese Road This May Day holiday the Shanghai-based Indie rock band Boys Climbing Ropes toured Nanjing and Wuhan. This is the story of their tour. Part One | Part Two | Part Three         Sound: New Releases May 22-29, 2007 Ozzy's Black Rain retreads the same song frameworks and genres as his previous records: tearful rock power ballads, riff-driven Metal fist pumpers, the chorus-driven radio single...         Sound: New Releases May 8th This is a big week for old artists with new albums-- an Elliott Smith double disc, the new Bjork, another Bone Thugs disc and for all the old folks, a new Barbra Streisand live album.         Critical Terms: Electroclash Electroclash, otherwise known as nu-electro, neo-electro, new new wave, neo-Italo, Hi-NRG, and shit disco...         Concert: The Roots at the Yunfeng Theater The group that self-markets as a musical genre called "hip-hop/soul/funk" carried out a feat that distinguishes them from every other hip-hop group in the world: they played Shanghai.         Pointless Nostalgia: George Michael: Faith People often forget that there was a time when George Michael wasn't gay. Well, I suppose he was always gay...         Concert: Foster and Jackson at 4 Live Wayne Foster and Peter Jackson, billed as two of Motown's original singers, glided onto the stage at 4 Live to give China something it desperately needs — a little soul.       back to top          Image Archives       Beijing Hosts 2007 China Tattoo Convention Though tattoos in China still draw scorn from Chinese elders and double-takes from straight-laced youth, this weekend tattoo enthusiasts gathered in Beijing for China's Tattoo Convention.         Comparative Art 101: Yifei and Friedrich Comparative Art 101 is a column that examines interesting parallels between notable works of Chinese and Western art.         Lime 388 Private Sale: Tung Lo French run, Shanghai-based gallery Lime 388 hosted its first private sale of works by a Chinese artist last Thursday night.         Scandal at the Gallery: Mendieta's 'Silueta' and 'Body Tracks' In the 70s and early 80s, during the second wave of Feminism, Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta undertook a project to subvert centuries of male-dominated artistry.         'Treasures from China' On Display in Quebec From May 11 to October 28, some of Beijing's finest and oldest holdings are encased in glass and available for viewing at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec.         696 Weihai Lu: An Artists' Haven Doomed 696 Weihai Lu, home to struggling multi-media artists, may become one more Shanghai architectural fatality this summer.         Scandal at the Gallery: Chris Burden's "Shoot" The crowd in the empty gallery watched as Burden's friend stepped about 15 feet away from Burden, pulled out a loaded .22 long rifle and proceeded to shoot Burden in the arm.         The Uchronians: Christo Meets the Blowtorch? In August 2006, a team of more than 40 followed their Belgian project leaders to a desert in Black Rock City, Nevada. The purpose of this pilgrimage? To build a time machine.         Shanghai Basement Houses Mao-Era Posters Hidden in the basement of a gated residential community on Huashan Lu resides one of the more subversive art exhibitions in China: The Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center.         Mao on Fire: Vandal Damages Iconic Portrait A man from northwest China's Xinjiang province threw a flaming object at the iconic Mao portrait that towers over Tiananmen Square in Beijing.         Review: Swiss Innovation Architecture Exhibition From April 7 through April 22 the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall hosted the Swiss Innovation Architecture Exhibition on its third floor.         Scandal at the Gallery: Rick Gibson's Rat Diptych Despite the efforts of Vancouver-based conceptual artist Rick Gibson, the world may never know what a diptych of squished rat guts would look like. In 1990, Gibson set out to make raticide art...         Chinese Painting Sells for Record Price On April 7, a painting by China's Xu Beihong fetched 8.19 million USD, setting a new record price for a Chinese oil painting. Protest painting "Put Down Your Whip" went...         Bruce Lee Biopic Breaks Down the Boredom of CCTV While mainland China takes credit for Bruce Lee at every opportunity, the kung fu master was born in San Francisco, grew up in British Hong Kong and spent most of his adult life in California.       back to top          Text Archives       'Nowhere is pure': Kiran Desai and The Inheritance of Loss The Inheritance of Loss meditates on loss as an emotional location, a sentiment shared by a set of characters continually torn and fragmented by their encounters with the modern world...         The New Shanghainese Dictionary On the streets, in the noodle shops, at the office, most Chinese in Shanghai don't converse in the language we read in our Mandarin texts or hear on our Chinese podcasts.           Text: New Releases June 20, 2007 Interventions is collection of 44 op-ed pieces written from 2002 - 2007 that delve into the bizarre mental paths of the Bush administration and resulting American policy.           Text: New Releases May 30, 2007 The Assault on Reason, the new book from concert promoter Al Gore, adopts a sweeping focus of the Bush administration and American society in general...           Banned: Fanny Hill John Cleland's erotic novel Fanny Hill was banned for over 200 years, yet it has managed to win its way into hearts and hands, bedrooms and ivory towers across the globe.           New Releases: May 15th, 2007 The latest book by British journalist and provocateur Christopher Hitchens sees the political pugilist shift his focus...           Switched Off: A Firsthand Account of a Beijing Blogger Censored There seems to be an absolute obsession with writing about what you can't write, or not writing about what you want to write. To me at least it seemed completely ludicrous...           Comparative Lit 101: Orwell and Wang Comparative Lit 101 is a column that examines interesting parallels between notable works of Chinese and Western literature.           Fake Reporter Sentenced to Life On Wednesday, a Beijing court sentenced a man to life in prison for posing as the editor of China's official Communist newspaper, the People's Daily.         New Releases: May 8th, 2007 Chuck Palahniuk's eighth novel is a grim religious parable set in a gritty future anchored around a deceased naturopathic serial killer, Buster "Rant" Casey.           Banned: The Licentious Lysistrata Written around 411 B.C., Greek playwright Aristophanes' comedy stages its lead character Lysistrata's successful attempt to persuade women from Sparta...           Erotic Similitude in French and Chinese Poetry The Shanghai International Literary Festival stumbled into its fourth year...           So He Went: Kurt Vonnegut Dead at 84 If you've only read one Vonnegut novel, it was probably Slaughterhouse Five (1969), and most likely, you read it in high school when you didn't know what postmodern meant.           An Evening with Gore Vidal Gore Vidal is just about three hundred years old by now and has access to almost 3 centuries of American lore...           John Ralston Saul and the Collapse of Globalism On a blue-skied Shanghai afternoon, the second Saturday of the 3-week long Shanghai International Literary Festival...         back to top

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