Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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Photograph by Zhang Xiao
Zhang Xiao was born in 1981 in China’s Shandong province. There is some great work on his website, in particular his series on the demolition linked to the infamous Three Gorges Dam.
Related link Up the Yantze
Carting
A worker hauls phone casings on a tricycle. Despite the dangers it presents, the e-waste business in Guiyu continues to thrive.
(image via)
Shangba, China’s Village of Death
A boy plays outside his home in in Xi Di Tou near the costal city of Tianjin. Villagers say the pollution emitted by chemical factories is causing cancer. Government figures show that 300 million people regularly drink polluted water and the effects are clear in the cancer village of Xiditou, near the port city of Tianjin, south-east of Beijing.
The Tianjin health authority admits that its cancer rate is 30 times the national average, a figure blamed on water and air contaminated by a rash of chemical factories.
A map of Cancer villages in China..
China’s “Cancer Villages” Pay Heavy Price for Economic Progress (Commondreams)
Leonard Cohen loved this film. Yung Chang described his encounter with Leonard Cohen at the end of this clip below.
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So I got this idea of making a movie about tourists on this Yangtze cruise boat – a kind of Gosford Park idea that shows the social hierarchy, the lives above and below the decks. And I realized that the people working on the boat were all from the Yangtze area, and that many of their families were affected by the dam.
The other aspect was this sense of apocalyptic journey – something out of Heart of Darkness. It’s a strange landscape of chaos and decay – like the photos of Edward Burtynsky. It’s very ghostlike along the river – hazy and grey and difficult to see long distances. Then we visited the Ghost City itself – Fengdu – famous in Chinese mythology as the site of the Gates of Hell. In my mind, the Three Gorges Dam became the Gates of Hell. There were so many metaphorical layers to explore, so I just went with this idea of a surreal journey up the Yangtze.(Q&A with the filmmaker Yung Chang)
I really wanted to approach my film with an Altmanesque/Herzogian cinematic technique. I like using fiction films as reference points. There’s also a natural irony and humor that often permeates through the observation of West and East cultures so it was important not to make an overly heavy doomsday film but to capture those humorous flashes that make a human story all the more real and three-dimensional. Of course, the beauty of documentary is that you’re literally improvising and being spontaneous. You let the environment, your subjects, and the given moment carry you along. There’s no storyboarding. When you’re making a documentary, you shoot a lot of footage in hopes of capturing a few emotional moments.
Collection of critical responses for this terrific film.
Hal was up the Yangtze decades ago.
I would like to see this film. In 1980 I went up the Yantze with my mother and brother. Takes 3 days, Sort of a slow beautiful unfolding. I got to know my tour guide, a very nice Chinese woman that always kept the door open when we talked to each other. She suggested to me, the corruption of the Communist party, she was a party member. Hal Lum (via email)
Li Shun <>
Rouge Flower – Silkscreen and Oil
141 works by 96 artists are represented in Mahjong:Contemporary Chinese Art from Sigg Collection now at Berkeley Museum.
Ai Wei Wei 
Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo (Click to enlarge)
Shi Xhinning 
Duchamp Exhibition in China. (Another Mao painting by Shi Xhinning)
Here more click through below,
Obssessive Memories – Liu Jiang Hua (In the mood for lost arms and body parts? Wong Kar Wai in porcelain).
Great Walls 2000 Years ago and Restaurant by Miao Xiao Chun
It looks like a landscape Liu Wei, Born 1989 in Beijing – Liu Wei
Wave by Li Song Song
(Mme Mao Tse Tung or Lady Maobeth and scarier than Sarah Palin, Chiang Ch’ing was another no talent actress when she met Mao. )
Chen Zai Yan – Three Famous Xingshu Documents
Hai bo – They Recorded for the Future
Mostly Mao here for this post, extremely narrow and biased selection, neverthless we must acknowledge that Mao was good for artists.
Yu Youhan 
Insiders View of China’s Art – Kenneth Baker
The collector explained that the Berkeley Museum’s architecture muddled the plan to have 12 thematic sections, which gave rise to the title “Mahjong.”
Uli Sigg: The exhibition concept doesn’t derive from mahjong, but it plays with it. It’s a game with 144 stones and you will have 12 groups of 12 stones. … Mahjong has been played since the Ming Dynasty and today it is played on the Internet, so it has a very large audience. It looks back into the past and also into the future. And the third element is that each time you play, the stones are combined differently, and as the exhibition travels, works will be combined in different ways.
A review from C-Monster
But here at Mahjong was a consumer vocabulary I could understand. There were fun clothes and bright constructivist posters and plastic tchotchkes, all sensationally over-obvious in their message. I wanted to buy, buy, buy!
(via)
Google Banksy Rat
Rat Dude is on sale.
Before Banksy there was Blek Le Rat
I am Blek le Rat. I am a French graffiti artist. I was one of the first artists to use stencils for an artistic purpose in Paris in the beginning of the 1980s—in ‘81 exactly. At first, I put rats and I made them run along the wall. I wanted to do a rat invasion. I put thousands all over Paris.
Between me and my heart there is nobody – Blek Le Rat on youtube
It is worth noting that the Rat Brigade did not discriminate on the basis of species.
Monkey on high bike 
The above image from A Speculative History of Rat patrol
Chinese New Year Rat 
Chinese New Year 4706, which begins Thursday, is the Year of the Rat, which holds a place of honor as the first creature in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese lunar calendar.
Porcile and Earthly Delight – last Chinese New Year post
Update:Not everyone is celebrating New Year in China
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Zhou En Lai greets Nixon. (Act I)
This funny opera was composed by John Adams, produced by Peter Sellers, and choreographed by Mark Morris.
Judging from these clips on youtube, Pat Nixon is the only non political person in the mix of power hungry world leaders, providing the audience with maternal warmth and humanity.
The Bad Boy provides us with more clips (one clip is missing).
As a big fan of the opera Nixon In China, I was so excited to find the following clips from it on YouTube. As the title implies, NIC is about the historic meeting between Richard Nixon and Mao Tse-tung. The composer, John Adams, once described it (jokingly) as an opera for “Republicans and Communists.” Well, I’m neither and I still love the hell out of it.
This third clip is one of my favorites. Kissinger (as Lao-Szu) whips a peasant woman half to death in a stage play. Pat Nixon comes to the woman’s aid and then the music gets better.
Today January 8 was the day China lost their beloved leader Zhou En Lai. in 1976.
How do you assess Zhou’s achievements in China’s tumultuous history?
Some accuse Zhou of going along with Mao and not protecting the Chinese people; others show gratitude to Zhou for saving China from Mao’s tyranny.
Zhou was first and foremost a survivor. Most of Zhou’s contemporaries died directly under the hand of Mao or died in mysterious accidents. Zhou alone, of his stature, survived. Mao was determined to outlive Zhou and did so by a few months.
Perhaps my favorite image of Zhou is from footage of Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. As the US President blathered on about ‘friendship and mutual respect,’ the jaded premier shifted in his chair unable to contain a mighty yawn at the dog and pony show onstage. Zhou’s work with Kissinger was done and in the books. That had been the important part.
Perhaps, he was simply tired. (This date in history: The Death of Zhou Enlai)
Iris Chang 
(Image source)
For Iris Chang
Alan Sondheim
If this were a suicide note, I would leave you my all. You would hear my voice in it, you would speak me as I have spoken to you, for the last time, and the words, the words would resonate in familiar tones uniquely my own. You would hear the silence after the speaking, and you would hear nothing else, nothing from me, but these words, over and over again. You might speak, but I would not hear. You might reach out to me, but I would not be there. I would not have known your new day, or the way you would read these lines, or even the smallest, simplest word, you might say, upon their completion. Such sadness, such anger, would not be mine, would not be of me, would not be anywhere. (Read more here.)
Book TV: Paula Kamen – Finding Iris Chang (youtube)
What happend to Iris Chang
Paula Kamen digs deep into the ambitious life and tragic death of her most successful friend.
Related link “Nightmare in Nanking” by Sue De Pasquale
Photograph by Wang Ning De
Today is the 58th Anniversary of People’s Republic of China.
A Chinese film depicting Mao Zedong founding the People’s Republic of China. Title unknown (From youtube)
The heroism of Burmese, the shame of China by Rosemary Righter (London Times)
When China joined Russia last January to veto a fairly mild United Nations Security Council resolution calling on Burma to free political prisoners and improve its abominable human rights record, Beijing’s Ambassador at the UN helpfully explained that “no country is perfect” and that “similar problems exist in other countries”. Including, as he of course did not say, China.
Looking for great photos of contemporary China?
Meeting Place Photo Beijin
Dance in a Small Town – Wang Nin De (Federico WangNinde Fellini)
Yoshiko 
and Isamu Noguchi
She met Isamu Noguchi in New York in the fall of 1950. They were married in Japan in May 1952 (From Noguchi org.)
Yoshiko (Shirley) Yamaguchi (born 1920), is a noted Japanese film star, television reporter and politician. Yamaguchi’s parents were Japanese, but she was born and raised in Manchuria. After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria she adopted a Chinese name, Li Xianglan (in Japanese, Ri Ko Ran), and appeared in propaganda films and other movies produced by the Japanese for Chinese audiences. At the end of World War II she avoided execution for treason in China by revealing her Japanese identity, and then established a career as Shirley Yamaguchi in Hollywood and on Broadway.
She went through radical changes as she assumed new names, new locations and new professions.
As Lixiang Lang (fragrant orchid) she sung like Judy Garland. Persian bird(Перская птица) (ペルシャの鳥) sang by 李香蘭 (Interesting find from youtube – she appears in a Russian film)
Born in turbulent times, Li Xianglan lived a complex, controversial life in which everyone seemed to have experienced multiple identities.
“What was that war all about?” remains the fundamental question. For me, “Li Xianglan” often reminds me of my father and my mother, living in their memories that are an
integral part of their personal history. Telling the story of Li Xianglan is my personal tribute to the memory of my late parents (Kore eda from Night Fragrant Flower)
Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, she avoided being recognized as Japanese in Manchuria and when in Japan she hated to see the Japanese feelings of superiority to Chinese.
More here from an interview – Looking back on my days as Ri-kolan
As Yoshiko Yamaguchi she left the land where she grew up to start afresh in Japan.
Scandal 
Yoshiko with Toshiro Mifune in a Akira Kurosawa film.
As Shirley Yamaguchi she appeared in Hollywood films, one of them A House of Bamboo is a film noir directed by Samuel Fuller.
As Yoshiko Otaka, she ran for office and visited the Middle East and became an advocate for the Palestinian cause.
I went to Vietnam to report on the war. I saw the front lines in Vietnam, and next I became interested in learning what the Middle East War was all about. (Looking back on my days as Ri-kolan)
Here is her early years slide show on youtube interspersed with a story of Mao and Chang Ching.
Here is another film clip – A woman of Shanghai..
I (this blogger) was in this film as a film extra with other Chinese classmates when I was around 7 years old. Every morning a bus from film studio came and pick us up from our school in Tokyo. We did lots of running around in Chinese orphan costumes. We even had a song to sing.
This was my mother’s favorite song which is banned by the Chinese government today.
Suzhou is the theme song of a sequel of the popular 1940 movie “Xina no Yoru” (China’s Night). The song’s lyrics depict the separation of two lovers — a Japanese sailor and a Chinese female guerrilla fighting against Japanese invaders.
Of her life with Isamu Noguchi, she was in awe and overwhelmed by his severity and steadfast dedication to his craft, to his art and his vision. (This I pulled from my memory from her old interview she did in a Japanese magazine. Frieda Kahlo had an affair with Noguchi. Compared to Frieda, Yoshiko seems more conventional.)
Li Xiang Lang (Yoshiko Y.) and T.E Lawrence.
She visited the Middle East several times and in her report THE ARABS UNWRITTEN she wrote that she met a young Bedouin Sherif in Egypt whose uncle claimed that he had adopted T. E. as a son(!)
See Billy Rose Sculptural Garden designed by Noguchi in Jerusalem another side by side comparison to Yoshiko work as a politician for the Palestinians’ causes.
Update: R.I.P Yoshiko Yamaguchi – Diva of China and Japan (see more photos here)
Mao’s Feet 
Tradition has become an obstacle of modern development. Consumers need not to care about tradition anymore. Modernization changed China greatly. Consumerism takes the place of the traditional art when the life style changes. Ma Jun described the change in his works “Porcelain Equipments” vividly. In his works, we could find both the artist’s memory of classic and his acceptance of consumerism, which are definitely the two aspects of modern urban life. (Via)
Here is a synopsis of imaginary tale of Chinese Porcelain “A Cup of Light” by Nicole Mones. (Scroll down)
More Ma Jun’s Television, cars, coca-cola and Chanel bottles here
Do you buy bottled water? Read this and think about the waste.
(Bicycle Mark drinks water from tap.)
Edward Yang 
– 1947-2007
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Yi Yi on youtube with Portugese subtitles. Here Issey Ogata plays Japanese Bill Gates type computer businessman.
The kid with a camera says farewell to grandmother here.
Obit from Steven Shaviro who has seen Edward Yang’s early films. Yi Yi is the only film released in USA.
I remember being stunned and blown away by The Terrorizer (1986) when I saw it at the Seattle Film Festival: sometime in the late 1980s. It was an elegant, beautifully meditative, and deeply unsettling exploration of urban anomie and alienation, paranoia, and random encounters; it played as if a Patricia Highsmith novel had been turned into a screenplay by Jorge Luis Borges, and then shot by Antonioni.
Edward Yang – a profile from Senses of Cinema.
Chinese surname spark rethink
When everybody’s named the same, then who knows Hu’s Hu?’ (via)
In a country of around 1.3 billion people, about 85 percent share only 100 surnames, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Ministry of Public Security in April and published in the China Daily newspaper on Tuesday.
Zhang Ziyi and Zhang Yimou
In the middle is Tony Leung Chiu Wai and the bottom is Tony Leung Ka Fai
Fay Wong in Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar Wai or Kar Wai Wong.
Ang Lee who is now a respected American director shares his surname with Spike Lee. Spike Lee is not even Chinese. They were roommates when they studied filmmaking at NYU.
Zhang and Zhang the Chinese pair figure skaters took Silver at the 2006 Olympics (Youtube) The commentator said that they share the same surname but are not related.
The Road Home – Zhang Ziyi in her first film directed by Zhang Yimou
Actually Zhang Ziyi and Zhang Yimou have different chinese characters. In romanized they are the same.
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