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“Sea of Blood” in China (again)
# North Korea’s “Sea of Blood” Opera Company has just completed its multi-city China tour, now a regular summer event. This year’s show was the ever-popular revolutionary opera “Flower Girl,” which...
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Army Art in Beijing
# The August 1st, 1927 founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is an anniversary marked each year by a host of commemorative events. Because the People’s Liberation Army is one of the most...
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Measuring China’s “National Revival”
# Citizens of the PRC are accustomed to having reams of statistics thrown at them – indeed, contemporary Chinese rhetoric demands that any important speech begin with a recitation of numbers and...
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Mo Yan Gets the Nobel Prize for Literature
# Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Chinese Writer Mo Yan # # A Nobel Prize has at long last been awarded to a Chinese who lives inside China, and outside prison. # Mo Yan, the 57-year old author...
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An “Ocean China” New Year Concert
# When the Communist Party of China held its annual plenum in the fall of 2011, it released a communiqué in which it announced its intention to become a major cultural power. This autumn, it held its...
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Xu Bing: New Writing for a New Era
Xu Bing continues to astound with his creativity and productivity. Here is an article that I wrote about one of his latest projects, “Book from the Ground.” The story was commissioned by the Asia...
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Go West, Young Orchestra
# # It was not so very long ago that a concert tour in the United States was a dream come true for a Chinese orchestral musician – but times have changed. # Indeed, the head of a major Chinese...
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The Three Highs Philharmonic
# Here is a story Sheila wrote about the “Three Highs” Philharmonic; the story was published today on Chinafile and is copied below. To see some video of the orchestra, go to Youku. # Classical Music...
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Tocqueville In China: The Communist Party Studies “The Old Regime”
# Newspapers and magazines have recently been filled with reports of the surprising popularity in China of Alexis de Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution (旧制度与大革命) which was first published...
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Pope Francis and the PRC
# The election last week of the first Jesuit pontiff in history brings to mind the storied China mission begun by Pope Francis’ Jesuit predecessor (and indirect namesake) St. Francis Xavier. Though...
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“Old Bei” in China
# The first time my husband, Jindong Cai, heard a Beethoven symphony was as a child in Cultural Revolution (1966-76) Beijing. His close friend, Wang Luyan, had somehow got hold of an old wind-up...
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The Diaries of Chiang Kai-shek
Years ago, in the late 1980s, I found myself stranded at the station in Taian, Shandong Province after I missed my train because I was unaware that China had implemented daylight savings time and the...
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China Invades Contemporary Fiction
# Upon learning that the novelist Mo Yan had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012, Chinese leader Li Changchun penned a jubilant letter that said, according to Xinhua, “Mo’s victory...
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Old Shanghai Loses a Living Legacy
# # # Teacher Gui – Gui Biqing (桂碧清) – was my Chinese teacher during the years I lived in Shanghai. When I first met her, in 1997, she lived in a tumbledown old house in a quiet lane in the...
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Best of Times, Or Worst of Times?
What Tiny Times Says About Our Times # # # # The summer box office hit “Tiny Times ” ( 小时代) – directed by celebrity author Guo Jingming, and based on the first volume of his fictional trilogy...
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Wang Luyan and the Power of Paradox
# Exploring All of Life’s Paradoxes # # By SHEILA MELVIN # # BEIJING — “Diagramming Allegory,” the Wang Luyan solo exhibition at the Beijing Parkview Green Exhibition Hall, occupies an enormous...
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Fu Lei: A Spirit for the Ages
A Spirit for the Ages # # # On a chilly day at the end of October, the cinerary urn that holds the ashes of Fu Lei – one of 20th century China’s great intellectuals – was moved from a cemetery in...
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Pearl Buck’s Final (?) Novel
When I first heard that The Eternal Wonder, a new novel by Pearl Buck, was scheduled for publication by Open Road Media on October 22 of this year, I assumed the announcement was either a mistake or a...
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The Anti-Corruption Drive Hits Classical Music
Jindong Cai conducting New Year’s Concert at Stanford University In late November of 2013, I sat chatting in a California concert hall with one of the PRC’s most famous first-generation pianists....
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Chinese “Ink Art” at the Met
On the last day of 2013, I hurried my husband and children through the bitter, late afternoon cold and up the sweeping outdoor staircase of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. We were going to see...
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