The New York Times, Published: July 7, 2004
Shanghai Covets a Big Role on Asia's Cultural Stage
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

SHANGHAI, July 1 — With its bold and luminous cut-glass design, the Shanghai Grand Theater can stake a claim to being the heart of this city, and the dazzling impression it makes fits this pulsing business center's glittery self-image to a T.

On a recent night here, as a full house settled in to watch an entirely Chinese production of a Broadway-style dance theater show, "Wild Zebra," the opening event in an international dance competition, the city's vice mayor delivered a booming inaugural exhortation that recalled the style of party cadres past.

Shanghai, he announced stiffly, is moving toward the great goal of creating a modern international culture center in Asia. His language was perhaps a bit blunt, but given Shanghai's cultural ambitions, it was difficult to gainsay the message for exaggeration.

For as long as the Communist Party has ruled China, Shanghai has suffered a deep inferiority complex in relation to the capital, Beijing. The early 20th century was Shanghai's moment in the sun, when it had a global reputation as a flashy and fleshy sin city with top-flight Western architecture and a cabaret culture to match.

But much of what was most vibrant then was derived from abroad, at a time when the country was carved up into imperial concessions, and Shanghai was China's main door to the world. Before that, Shanghai, a mere infant of a city, had hardly registered in the long tableau of Chinese history.

Nowadays the city's cultural profile is changing as fast as its skyline, which barely 15 years ago was a drab and low-slung jumble and today ranks easily as one of the world's most fantastic. Determined to raise the city to the level of regional rivals like Tokyo and Hong Kong as well as Beijing, Shanghai officials have made culture a major priority.

Beijing has its Forbidden City, its prestigious national schools and museums, its centuries-old neighborhoods that breathe Chinese culture, none of which Shanghai can realistically challenge. But like Tokyo, all but destroyed in World War II, this city is making a virtue of its newness.

As a cornerstone of the revival, which began in earnest in the early 1990's, the Shanghai government spent $226.8 million, an immense sum in a country still classified as a developing nation, to build a world-class cultural complex in the center city. The recently built structures include the Shanghai Grand Theater, the equally striking Shanghai Museum, in the shape of an ancient Tang vessel, and the Shanghai Art Museum.

The city's investment in premium performance and exhibition spaces, though still modest in comparison with major Western artistic centers, has given Shanghai not only a blush of self confidence but also a cockiness in its rivalry with Beijing.

"Shanghai can already attract talent from all over the country, in fact all over the world," said Chen Feihua, director of the Shanghai dance school that created "Wild Zebra." "Our production values are broader and fit international tastes. `Wild Zebra' has toured on the best stages of Europe, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and other cities, and there is a business element to this that is very particular to Shanghai." He continued: "We go into these markets, and when we return home, we don't just smile and wave goodbye, we bring home 10 million euros. Our friends in Beijing look at our ability to do something like this with a lot of envy."

Shanghai's strategy of build and hope the visitors come seems to be gathering momentum but draws mixed reviews even among the city's artists, who are debating how the city goes about becoming a world-class cultural center.

An ambitious private museum, the Shanghai Gallery of Art, opened in January at Three on the Bund, a lavishly restored building in the historic riverfront district. It has become a premier place for displaying new Chinese artists and established stars. "Shanghai has already become an attractive cultural city," Weng Ling, director of the museum, said. "What we need now is more professionalism, more cultural exchanges and more support for artists."

Across the Huangpu River in the Pudong district, reclaimed swampland that is now home to the city's tallest, most gaudily lighted skyscrapers, the city government is planning a new art museum in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum in New York, raising doubts among some who wonder whether Shanghai is going too far, too fast.

"A year ago someone told me that China has built 35 cultural complexes, but who is going to perform in them?" asked Kai-Yin Lo, a Hong Kong designer who has advised that city on its artistic development. "The Germans and the Japanese have learned the lesson of hardware: that without the software, you can't maintain the flow. Just look at Bilbao."

"Freedom, too, is very important," she added. "That is what we in Hong Kong can boast."

Urban and cultural development experts agree that museums and other institutions are a starting point. But they say that to emerge as a real cultural powerhouse, a city must fulfill a variety of criteria, including some that defy government planning here.

"Cities that are really vibrant are creative in a lot of different ways," said Richard Florida, a professor of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the author of "The Rise of the Creative Class . . . And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life." "You look at a city like Pittsburgh, which built huge artistic institutions, really huge places, and drove all of their artists out — people like Andy Warhol or Billy Strayhorn, because they were too edgy and unconventional, or maybe gay."

Professor Florida said that so far the greatest cities of East Asia were falling short of these criteria. "It is important to have the institutions, but you also need vibrant street culture and an open culture, not only openness toward ethnic diversity, but also diversity in sexual orientation and freedom of expression," he said. "Asia certainly needs a city like this, and Shanghai could be the one. Certainly the city that figures it out first will have some tremendous advantages."

By reputation Shanghai is China's most cosmopolitan city, but even some artists who have succeeded here say the city falls short of the diversity needed to become a world-class cultural center.

"They don't have any international students, and I haven't noticed any international teachers, either," said Yuan Yuan Tan, 28, a native of Shanghai who dances with the San Francisco Ballet. "If Shanghai wants to be an international cultural center, they have to do something about that. The reason I left is that I wanted to explore what ballet is all about, and if I had stayed put, that wouldn't have happened.

By one important measure, however, Shanghai has already succeeded. Increasingly, artists based here have proved they can flourish internationally with little need, as in the past, to go to Beijing first to establish themselves.

"As a new city, the software or the quality of the people and their artistic taste has to be boosted gradually," said Yang Fudong, a specialist in elaborate and deliberately puzzling multimedia displays who has become one of China's best known artists internationally.

At the Shanghai Gallery of Art recently, Mr. Yang was putting the finishing touches on a new exhibit, a labyrinthlike construction with two film projectors casting their images across the faces of people who wander inside. "In Shanghai I see people taking in the shows, going to the museums, even taking their children to the museums, and that's a beautiful thing," he said. "One doesn't become a fat man overnight, so we shouldn't be impatient."
http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F70A17F63C5F0C748CDDAE0894DC404482
http://www.creativeclass.org/nyt_070704.shtml

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China's Silent Screen Queen
By MIKE HALE
Published: July 4, 2004
PAY attention now: an actress, her country's biggest star, makes a movie based on the life of another actress who, hounded by the press because of her scandalous love life, committed suicide. A few months later, the star — hounded by the press because of her scandalous love life — commits suicide herself. She does it by copying the character she just played: stirring barbiturates into her bedtime porridge.

The story sounds a little too good to be true. O.K., way too good to be true. But it's the story, as we know it, of Ruan Ling-yu, the queen of China's silent film industry, who is still revered by generations of Chinese who have never seen her movies. Her death in 1935 at the age of 24, with its melodramatic overtones, ensured her status as a tragic heroine. It's also just about the only tale Westerners have heard about the days of Chinese silent film, a madly competitive and, scholars say, creative business centered in Shanghai in the 1920's and 30's. Many movies were lost in the tumultuous decades that followed, and those that were saved remained locked away in state archives. Up to now, the only images from that period widely seen outside China were the bits of film the Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan was able to include in "Ruan Ling-yu" (1992), his loving and mythicizing biopic starring Maggie Cheung as Ruan, which got a sporadic release here as "Center Stage."

But over the last few years the China Film Archive has begun to let some silent prints leave the country. Several have been worked on by Western preservationists, including Ruan's most famous film, "Shennu" ("The Goddess"), which will be screened next Sunday in the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. According to Stephen Salmons, artistic director of the nine-year-old festival, it's one of about a dozen films from the era that are in good enough condition to be shown as complete features. The best news for the curious fan: the festival, in cooperation with the China Film Archive, is selling a DVD of "The Goddess" ($29.95 at http://silentfilm.org/products/dvd1.htm).

A proletarian tearjerker about a prostitute who wants the best for her young son, the film is a fascinating artifact in its own right: a cutting from the cultural hothouse of mid-30's Shanghai, where artists could try to fuse Eastern and Western traditions while facing the dual threats of Nationalist government censorship and Japanese invasion (and quietly hoping for a Communist takeover). Its frankness about its heroine's profession is startling — unlike even pre-code Hollywood hookers, Ruan doesn't taxi dance or loll about in furs; she just stands on the sidewalk until a man comes along and leads her into the shadows. And while Ruan's acting, in her next-to-last film, won't make anyone forget Lillian Gish, she is an amazing subject for the camera, alive and transparent in the special way of silent stars — as Mr. Salmons says, "when you get that close-up, you feel as if you're seeing into her soul." You can see why Stanley Kwan wanted to make a movie about her, and understand another part of her myth: that after she killed herself, the funeral procession in Shanghai was more than two miles long.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/movies/04HALE.html?ex=1246680000&en=604ca52e4c8356d5&38;ei=5088&38;partner=rssnyt
http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=news&id=6285
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/09/content_347086.htm

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Taipei Times
How to bait Chinese children through advertising
`Advertising to Children in China' is an academic work that provides some uncritical guidelines to stirring material desire in China's youth
By Bradley Winterton - CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Sunday, Jul 11, 2004, Page 18

Publication Notes:
Advertising to Children in China
By Kara Chan and James U Mcneal
206 pages
Chinese University Press, Hong Kong

The history of attitudes toward children in the West has undergone some strange changes. Or, to be more exact, it underwent one big change, and is now in the process of drifting back to where it was before.

For centuries children were considered simply as small adults. They frequently worked as soon as they were able to do anything useful, and -- something that perhaps surprises us most these days -- the age of sexual consent was 12. This, at least, was the case for long centuries in the UK. People just looked at the young, saw that nature brought on puberty at about that time, and effectively said "So that's how nature has arranged things," and set their laws accordingly. When Juliet marries Romeo in Shakespeare's play she is 14.

The big change occurred some time in the late 18th or early 19th centuries. People began to see childhood as a special, even magical time. The Romantic poets exalted childhood as a time of peculiar grace, certainly in England, and for William Wordsworth, for instance, the child was a species of visionary.

This new attitude eventually caught on as the received wisdom, and as a result there were calls for the banning of child labor in factories, and the raising of the age of consent. In the UK this was raised from 12 to 13 in 1883, and from 13 to 16 two years later (against grumbling protests from the parliamentary upper chamber, the House of Lords).

When commercial television first made its mass appearance in the 1950s it was still felt by many in the West that advertising aimed at children was wrong. It wasn't so much that children didn't yet have the discernment to judge such things rationally -- many adults, after all, never gained that ability. It was more a lingering feeling that childhood was an idyllic time that oughtn't be intruded upon. Advertising, in other words, was seen in that context as a kind of pollution.

Yet here we have a new book published by two China-focused academics that treats the phenomenon in what is almost a matter-of-fact way. It isn't only that they take TV advertising aimed at kids in China, as elsewhere, for granted. An endorsement printed on the back cover even goes so far as to state that the book "will prove useful to international business students and advertising practitioners."

The book continues by establishing different sub-groups based on age among children, looking at statistics about what they watch and how much and in what ways they're influenced. The authors then proceed to compare these things with the way they are in the US and Europe, and then looks at issues such as state controls on advertising to kids in the different places.

One of the main points it has to make is that the child occupies a rather special position in the family in China. The reason for this, of course, is the one-child policy, first set in place in 1979. This one child, the authors argue, quickly grows to have far more power over family decisions, including decisions on what to buy, than its equivalent elsewhere. Does it answer to the classic definition of "spoiled brat," they ask. In many cases the answer in China has to be "Yes."

But the authors aren't apparently unduly worried about this. If you're only allowed to have the one child, then it's hardly surprising that four adoring grandparents and two adoring parents are going to constitute a powerful pressure-group in the domestic domain. Besides, consumer protection, is a relatively recent development in the West, and a highly sophisticated form of human right in China, considering all the other human rights, acknowledged or denied, it has to compete with.

Nevertheless, there are quite elaborate controls in place governing advertising aimed at children in China. It shouldn't show affluent kids displaying pride in possessing a product while an impoverished counterpart dressed in rags looks on in envy. It shouldn't show children indulging in insulting behavior to the family (or, needless to say, the state). And it shouldn't encourage children to ask their parents to buy the advertised product for them. This last prohibition is surely ambiguous at best. Isn't what it seems to ban the whole point of such advertising?

The good news, however, is that the older generations in China still distrust advertising in general, and that many of the young are coming to take a similar view.

Citizens of this and other emerging Asian economies, however, tend, in my experience, to take a tolerant view of advertising. The reason, I think, is that the products that get advertised most are ones that carry with them the cachet of modernity, frequently foreign imports. By and large you don't get as many advertisements for, say, traditional medicines or restaurants offering noodles as you do for Coca Cola or McDonald's.

Advertisements, therefore, represent the things that are carrying life away from the impoverished, embarrassing existence that was the country's experience just a short time ago, and still prevails in areas outside parts of a few big eastern and southern cities. (The authors point out that in 2000 Beijing, Shanghai and Guandong between them accounted for nearly half the country's TV advertising expenditure).

As for me, I admit to having an old-fashioned attitude to much advertising. I consider many advertisers as fitting Jonathan Swift's famous diatribe against lawyers in Gulliver's Travels, of which the following is representative: "I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves."
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/07/11/2003178603

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International Herald Tribune, Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Puppets' hand in family profits
Caroline Gluck IHT

YUNLIN, Taiwan The Huangs of central Taiwan have been skilled puppeteers for four generations. Today, they have turned their craft into a multimillion dollar enterprise.

Glove puppetry is one of Taiwan's traditional arts - introduced around 200 years ago during the first large wave of immigrantion from China's eastern Fujian Province. In its heyday, there were hundreds of troupes. But in modern Taiwan, their numbers - and audiences - are dwindling.

The Huang family has managed to swim against the tide. They have made their art relevant and popular with modern-day audiences, and they haven't been afraid to turn to the newest media and technology to do so.

"You could say our family motto is 'innovation is our tradition,'" says Chris Huang, president of Pili International Multimedia, which he set up with his brother, Vincent Huang. "My grandfather and my father weren't afraid to innovate. And today this industry is so competitive that innovation is a necessity. You need to stay ahead of the game to survive."

The company employs more than 200 people, and Huang says it makes profits of around $20 million a year. From its headquarters in Yunlin county, it operates three film studios, producing two puppet dramas a week for the video market. A company spokesman said more than a million people a week rent the videos.

Older episodes are screened on the Pili Cable Network, which the brothers established in 1995, largely dedicated to promoting the art of puppetry.

In 2000, the company released its first feature film, "The Legend of the Sacred Stone." Like their popular videos, it dazzled audiences with its strong story line, action-packed battle scenes and special effects - including 3-D computer animation. It was a box office smash - the highest grossing locally produced film at the time. The rights were sold to China, South Korea, Japan and the United States.

Pili - which has plans to become a publicly listed company - is working on another feature film project. Filming is expected to begin early next year, with a release date in summer 2006.

"The next film will be a mix of Chinese kung fu with magic," says Chris Huang, who is also the company's chief scriptwriter. "I'm thinking of something like 'Lord of the Rings' or 'Harry Potter' - but with Chinese characteristics, such as the kung fu element." The film will be targeted at the international market and will be originally recorded in English - not Taiwanese or Chinese.

Part of Pili's success can be traced to its aggressive marketing. Merchandising - from computer games to dolls, pens, T-shirts, magazines and even a joint marketing venture with Taiwan's largest credit-card company - brings in about a fifth of the company's revenue. Products can be ordered from Pili's Web site. There are hundreds of puppet characters in the stories, but the main ones have their own fan clubs and product spinoffs. People can also visit the film studios.

While some purists have criticized the company for moving away from the craft's traditions, the Huang family makes no apologies for being commercially minded. "We haven't lost sight of the art," Chris Huang says. "For example, we performed a show at the National Theater, and we're invited to take part in festivals all over the world.

"But we are trying to focus on the business. It's essential if our company is going to continue to survive. The business can ensure the survival of our puppet arts."

His grandfather, Huang Hai-tai, who is now 103 years old and considered a national treasure, is fully behind the innovations. He began learning his art at the age of 14 from his father. Puppet masters would be the "voices" of all the puppet characters. At a time when the shows were based on Chinese historical tales and themes of patriotism and filial piety, he introduced racier stories - tales of good and evil, with dramatic plots and action-packed martial arts scenes.

His own sons introduced further innovations: dry ice and explosions, for example, to create more exciting stage effects; using local and Western pop music, rather than traditional instruments, to accompany the performances, and introducing larger puppets - they are now about a meter high - with more flexibility in the hand movements.

A big breakthrough was when one son, Huang Chun-hsiung, who created the popular character, Shih Yen-wen - the archetypal "knight in shining armor" - got his show aired on television. It became massively popular and ran for more than 500 episodes.

"The audiences loved the changes," says Huang Chun-hsiung, who has his own puppet production company, Meidiwu. "And that was important. You need to keep the audience happy. That's key to your success.

"Some people criticized me for introducing new concepts. But you have to innovate - look at people like Steven Spielberg. He introduced exciting story lines and lots of special effects and he got big audiences. You shouldn't be afraid to commercialize."

Chris Huang says he is not too concerned about passing the art and the business to the next generation.

"Its an enterprise now," he says. "We'll give future positions to those who are the most competent. Of course, I'll feel a little sad if our children don't continue with the family business, but as long as Pili can keep going, I'll have achieved my duty."
http://www.iht.com/articles/530155.html

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www.chinaview.cn 2004-07-19 20:59:00
HK Museum of Art invites visitors to cultural tour of Asia

HONG KONG, July 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Members of the public and tourists to Hong Kong are invited to experience a contemporary Asian cultural odyssey created by a multi-media art exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art from July 23 to Sept. 5.

Jointly organized by Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Center of Visual Culture of the China Academy of Art and the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, the exhibition aims to explore the cultural contents of Asian countries which adopt a "parallel time" system through the presentation of a cultural research project "Edges of the Earth: An Investigation Journey".

The project was conducted in 2003 by a group of young scholars from the China Academy of Art in company of artists and independent curators. Based in east China's Hangzhou city, they traveled through selected cities, including Tokyo, Kyoto, Bangkok,Bombay Tehran and Istanbul, to study the cultural identity of Asian countries.

During the journey, the project participants visited different art communities ranging from contemporary masters to ethnic artists, national institutions to private art spaces, traditional workshops to working places of cultural celebrities.

By documenting the distinguished human-geographical features, episodes of daily life and mechanism of contemporary and traditional art production in these Asian cities, the investigation provides not only materials but also new approaches for the discussions in relation to the development of contemporaryart and visual culture in the context of Pan-Asia, connecting contemporary Chinese art to the reconstruction of a new Asian cultural vision.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-07/19/content_1615653.htm

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The Scotsman, Mon 19 Jul 2004
Celebrating Scotland's Chinese connection
JIM GILCHRIST

EAST IS meeting west in a big way with the opening of One Million Days in China in Glasgow, the city’s first major exhibition of the country’s art and culture.

The exhibition draws on the massive and hitherto largely unseen Chinese collections amassed by Sir William Burrell, the Glasgow shipping magnate. Although he never visited China, the objects betray his fascination for the Orient.

Today, there are some 10,000 people of Chinese descent in Scotland, but our links with the country are much deeper, and sometimes much more surprising, than the ubiquitous take-away...

TRADING PLACES
Sir William’s great uncle George was the first British governor of Hong Kong, but Scottish trade links with China go back much further. The first British visitor to Macau was a Scot, William Carmichael, in the 16th century, but it was not until 1719 that the next noted Scot visited the country. Dr John Bell journeyed there from St Petersburg. By the end of the18th century, Professor James Gregory was mixing powdered rhubarb root from China into his famous Gregory’s Mixture.

From the mid-19th century onwards, Scots tai-pans such as Jardine and Matheson have been at the very heart of the Hong Kong business community.

A COMMON LANGUAGE
Linguistically they’re worlds apart, but both Chinese and Scottish folk music favour the five-note pentatonic scale, a point which interests Glasgow composer Edward McGuire. His group, the Whistlebinkies, were the first Scots folk band to play in China. Now McGuire is working with Chinese communities in Scotland to compose music which blends and contrasts the styles of the two countries.

LEAP OF FAITH
During the 19th and 20th centuries, many Scots visited China as missionaries - the most famous being Eric Liddell, who won a gold medal and set a world record for the 400m at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, after famously refusing to run in the 100m because it took place on a Sunday.

CHINESE GARDEN
Born in Falkirk in 1873, George Forrest, perhaps the greatest plant-hunter of his day, spent much of his life in China’s Yunnan province, from where he brought a variety of plants to our gardens - primulas, rhododendrons and irises among them. He died of a heart attack in China in 1932, but his legacy continues with the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh’s field station and a planned botanic garden at Lijiang.

CROSS-CULTURAL
Among the guests at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival will be Professor Da Zheng, of Suffolk University, Boston, who is writing a biography of Chiang Yee, the once hugely popular travel-writer, artist and polymath. Yee, whose superb Silent Traveller in Edinburgh was republished last year by Mercat Press , was a friend of Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, the Scots sinologist portrayed by Peter O’Toole in the film The Last Emperor.

Yee, who died in 1977, was also a great admirer of the work of Burns, who he saw as a virtual Confucian, equating the ancient philosopher's maxim "the measure of man is man" with the bard’s "a man’s a man".

EPIC TALES
Meanwhile, Scots Borderer Brian Holton, a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has spent years translating the epic Chinese folk tales known as The Water Margin into Scots. This may sound like an abstruse exercise, but in Scots, these tales of soldiers, monks and bandits acquire the impact of any Border ballad. If The Men o the Mossflow is ever published, it could be the longest piece of Scots prose for centuries.

USING OUR NOODLE
Before construction started on the new Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, archaeologists excavating its site in Edinburgh’s Chambers Street discovered shards of a porcelain rice bowl - a relic from Scotland’s first Chinese restaurant, established at the west end of Chambers Street by a Mr Wong in the 1930s.

One Million Days in China is at the Burrell Collection, Pollok Country Park, Glasgow until 13 February 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=821072004

 

 

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Digital Resources
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University of Heidelberg
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