China Daily
Top News
Shandong artist Han Fang presents an 800-work homage to erren zhuan, the northeastern stage skit art at the Liu Laogen Museum, including a caricature of master artist Zhao Benshan (below).
To capture humor in cold clay is hard. To embody the living stagecraft of performance art in a series of static sculptures takes even greater talent and dedication. But this is what happens when comedy veteran Zhao Benshan chances upon the art of Shandong potter Han Fang. The fruit of their combined talents is now manifested in a permanent exhibition paying homage to the northeastern Chinese art of erren zhuan, the popular multi-disciplinary stage skits performed in a male-female duet. It is an act that combines singing, dancing, comedy, cross-talk and acrobatics, usually involving much twirling of silk handkerchiefs and fans.
Sunday Digest
Free-trade agreement negotiation between China, Japan and the Republic of Korea will probably begin within this year, officials from the three countries said on Saturday.
Sunday Profile
He had dropped a clay sculpture he had almost completed, and that accident changed his artistic direction forever. That marked the turning point for Han Fang, and gave him a signature style that would propel him into the limelight.
Sunday People
Shi Junfang may appear similar to most young, Chinese single women in her 30s. She is hard working, loves chatting and telling jokes and exudes charm with a quick smile. Yet, her character is remarkable since she has devoted her life as a Catholic nun caring for disabled orphans in Biancun Village, a rural community in Central China's Hubei province.
Sunday Expat
Q: You recently accompanied Premier Wen Jiabao on his trip to your country. What are your impressions of that visit?
Sunday Image
For Shaoxing's famous wine-makers, it's prime time. Photographer Wang Yuanchang savors the heritage wines.
Sunday Sports
This time, the fourth quarter belonged to the Memphis Grizzlies.
Sunday Life
IT IS The greatest remaining mystery in climate science: How will clouds change with global warming?
Lifestyle Trends
TOKYO - Toshiharu Ota, a rice farmer in Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan, survived the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster last year. But his fields were devastated by the salt deposits left behind when the tsunami's floodwaters receded.
Science and Technology
It may never be as well known as the Cretaceous extinction, the one that killed off the dinosaurs. Yet the much earlier Permian extinction - 252 million years ago - was by far the most catastrophic of the planet's five known paroxysms of species loss.
Arts and Styles
CORDES JUNCTION, Arizona - It is an ultramodern compound rising above a desert canyon: an ever-unfinished city upon a hill.
Sunday Style
In his four decades as a furniture craftsman, Zhu Xiaojie has worked with stone, glass, steel, leather, hemp, acrylic, fossil, marble and elastic. But nothing has been as dear to him as wood, especially the striped zebrawood indigenous to West Africa.
Sunday Food
Yunnan province spreads across a rich tapestry of geological and climatic diversity in southwest China. In the north, the Tibetan foothills nurture alpine vineyards that are beginning to be known for cool climate grape varieties like Riesling, harvested and pressed in winter for the country's best-tasting icewine.
Sunday Kaleidoscope
For 14 editions now the Far East Film Festival in Udine, northern Italy, has introduced the very latest in Asian commercial cinema to a European audience.
Sunday Travel
Strange as it may seem, New Zealand has only recently found a place on the mainstream global travel map after Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy put its physical beauty in front of billions of eyes.
