Reviews

Book

Beijing Portrait of a City

Compiled by Alexandra Pearson and Lucy Cavender

The Middle Kingdom Bookworm Ltd

Beijing Portrait of a City is a series of literary snapshots taken by 13 of the capital's brightest native and expatriate writers. Rather than one view we are offered a variety of focal points and the result is a panoramic vision of the city's history and its current diversity.

As would be hoped, it is difficult to pick highlights, but after Zhu Wen's scene-setting poems we are immersed in Beijing's history with Adam Williams' The Camels of Khanbalik. His outsider's perspective is beguiling and he sucks us in with a story about his grandmother returning for a visit after 66 years, recalling camel races "alongside the city walls".

Ma Jian made his name with Red Dust, but here he takes a trip down memory lane into Beijing's hutong of the 1970s, where artists would drop in, along with the occasional eggshells, pigeon droppings and "once, a plate of kidneys" from the buildings above. His work, Zhu's, and Hong Ying's exploration of Lalas and comrades (code for homosexuals), is in both Chinese and English.

Catherine Sampson introduces the detective Song Ren while Karen Smith discusses The Heart of Art. We rummage around in Panjiayuan's past, are educated about the Mongol heart of Beijing, investigate a murder in 1937, and much more. The evocative black-and-white photographs of Lucy Cavender are especially grabbing.

The book was released to coincide with the recently concluded Beijing International Literary Festival. For a novel introduction to the city look no further. Jules Quartly

DVD

I am Legend

Directed by Francis Lawrence, starring Will Smith, Alice Braga, Salli Richardson, Charlie Tahan

Adapted from Richard Matheson's classic 1954 novel, I am Legend is an interesting sci-fi film.

The opening scenes are quite impressive, with its images of a ravaged Manhattan, with weed growing everywhere amid deserted cars and a Times Square overrun by lions and deer. In the midst of all this is Robert Neville (Will Smith), the survivor of a fatal virus. As he searches for other survivors, Neville finds a young woman Anna (Alice Braga) and a boy Ethan (Charlie Tahan).

However, the CGI creations of hairless zombies seem rather jaded. But the storyline does provoke some thinking when it poses such questions as what humans can do now if we really have 100 years to live on Earth. Will Smith puts in a convincing and powerful performance, which compensates for the unimaginative special effects in the latter half. Liu Wei

(China Daily 04/02/2008 page20)