 Who's in
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-25 07:48 Museum of fusion art
You've heard of fusion cooking. Now veteran artist Chen Fucheng pushes the bounds of "fusion art" - combining calligraphy, seal cutting and purple clay pottery-making in his own signature style. The Chen Fucheng Art Museum, which opened this week in Beijing's Chaoyang district, displays over 500 selected teapots, as well as unique works of brick carving and calligraphy. Born in 1943, Chen was trained in traditional Chinese arts and culture. From the 1960s until the 1980s, he earned a reputation as a distinguished scholar on the topic of ancient Chinese characters, while working for the Liaoning Provincial Museum. Today Chen's work draws inspiration from ancient art in Qin and Han dynasties, yet pushes tradition further with the inclusion of poetic lines, couplets and iconic images engraved on the teapots. Art for charity Sometimes, art isn't just for art's sake. In October, the China Contemporary Art International Exhibition Tour will kick off in Shanghai to raise money to combat childhood leukemia. A portion of the proceeds from art sales will be donated to the China Charity Federation's foundation for young Chinese suffering from leukemia. Since its inception in March, the special foundation has accumulated about 8 million yuan ($1.14 million), says Yu Jianhua, an official with the charity. Patients are given up to 100,000 yuan to help cover the cost of medical treatments. At present, China has about 2 million children aged between 2 and 15 suffering from the deadly disease. Some 40 renowned Chinese artists, including He Duoling, Mao Yan, Gu Wenda, Zhu Cheng, Shang Yang, and Qiu Zhijie, have agreed to participate in the charity drive. After stops in Shanghai, Tokyo and other cities in Asia, the exhibition will arrive in Hong Kong, where an exhibition and then a charity auction will be held in late November, in collaboration with Est-Quset Auction Co. Ltd from Japan. China's waterworks
A 20-part documentary called Water and China is running on science and technology channel CCTV-10. Each episode details historical stories about water control or water resource protection. Citing examples like the ancient water conservation project Dujiangyan (pictured) in Chengdu, Sichuan province, the production shows the relationship between water and the development of Chinese civilization. It took one year for the crew of CCTV-10's Green Space to shoot the documentary, traveling from the western ends of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to eastern China. Blockbusters coming
Moviegoers can look forward to a bunch of domestic blockbusters hitting theaters in the coming months. Chen Kaige's biopic of Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang (pictured), young director Lu Chuan's Nanjing! Nanjing!, which is a serious work on the 1937 massacre, and popular director Ning Hao's work on racing cars, are some of the highlights. Chinese blockbusters are doing well at the box office, according to Zhang Hongsen, vice president of the State Film Bureau, China's top regulator of the industry. John Woo's Red Cliff has been a standout, earning more than 100 million yuan in the first four days since its debut this month. By the end of June, total box office receipts were 1.6 billion yuan ($228 million), a 45 percent growth over the same period last year. About 900 million yuan were from Chinese films, an increase of 50 percent over the same period in 2007, Zhang said. Marathon of marvels Discovery's special programs on China to coincide with the Beijing Olympics, will be shown on 27 mainland television networks on Sunday. China 08.08.08, named after the date of the opening ceremony, consists of nine documentaries with three themes: Man Made Marvels, depicts the building of the National Stadium, Beijing Airport's T3 terminal and the National Center of Performing Arts. Ultimate Olympics tells how the whole country has been preparing for the Games. Seven Wonders of China presents great historical architectures. The programs will be aired on Beijing Television Channel 8 at 9:05 pm from Monday to Friday and 5:40 pm on weekends; on Shanghai Documentary Channel at 9 pm every night; and every day on Guangzhou TVS-1 at 4:50 pm. China Daily (China Daily 07/25/2008 page18) |
