Editor's picks

Chinese-style jazz

Karen Mok's first English jazz album, Somewhere I Belong, offers a Chinese flavor to the traditional style of music. Released on Jan 18 worldwide, the album sees the singer-actress' 22-month's efforts. She plays guzheng, the traditional Chinese zither-like instrument, on her imaginative cover of George Harrison's Beatles classic While My Guitar Gently Weeps. The album also embraces Chris Isaak's Wicked Game, Sting's Moon Over Bourbon Street, and Cole Porter's Love For Sale. Mok has included two Chinese numbers.

- Chen Nan

Fresh Butterfly

Theater-goers all know the story of Madame Butterfly. National Theater of China has joined hands with Arts Center Melbourne to give a fresh interpretation of the well-known story. Set in Shanghai in the 1930s, the musical Butterfly tells the tragic story between Chinese woman Cho Cho and American naval officer Pinkerton. Australian director Peter Wilson will add puppets into the show as Cho Cho's daughter and Cho Cho's soul. Chinese composer Cheng Jin writes the music, while the lyrics come from the playwright Daniel Keene.

7:30 pm, until Jan 20. National Theater of China, 277 Guan'anmenwai Street, Xicheng district, Beijing. 400-610-1101.

- Chen Jie

Cixi's expensive taste

Power and beauty these are the two things associated with Cixi. She was the empress dowager whose behind-the-curtain rule over the entire China stretched for nearly half a century between 1861 and 1908. Now, historians are adding another element - taste - to this much written-about and hated woman, commonly blamed for accelerating the Middle Kingdom's slide into the dark swamp of semi-colonialism. The China of Cixi, a sumptuously mounted exhibition, recently opened at Beijing's Capital Museum. It offers footnotes to not only a luxurious and decadent lifestyle, but also an iron lady's strong propensity toward the exquisite and the fanciful.

9 am-5 pm, daily except Monday until June 16. Capital Museum, 16 Fuxingmenwai Street, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-6339-3339.

- Zhao Xu

(China Daily 01/18/2013 page18)