Many of the barricades near Occupy Central began coming down this morning, but not without resistance. I took the above video at 1:40 pm today on Queensway in Admiralty, just below Hong Kong's police headquarters, a few blocks from the main protest grounds. A group of older men, apparently frustrated that the two-week Occupy Central protests have blocked their streets, rip down the barricades while others chant, "Open the roads." Some quick-thinking Occupy protesters immediately plant themselves in the middle of the street for an impromptu sit-in.
Artists and writers seeking the pinnacle of Chinese civilization often turn to the Tang Dynasty, an era of openness and innovation credited with fostering some of the finest art and poetry in the history of Han civilization.
It’s no surprise that such an amazing era would provide similar inspiration to Xu Songbo, a professor at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, who attempts to capture the Tang spirit in his breathtaking oil compositions. They are collected in Tang Feng, his exhibition open until this Thursday at New Millennium Gallery in 798 Art District.
Some of you have rightly wondered what’s happened to the Cream – no thrice-weekly links, no videos of stupid people falling out of buildings, no reminders that traffic violations can (hilariously, tragically) happen, etc. What’s going on? The simple answer is, after taking a summer break, we’ve decided that the landscape of the English-language "Chinese" Internet has become both wearily homogenized and sufficiently pluralistic for us to take a step sideways. It's transition time.
I work for a sub-branch of CCTV geared toward international video news, and we have several TV screens in the office that run 24-hour feeds of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and others – ostensibly to keep up with the competition. But I returned from our canteen this past Sunday evening to find six or seven of my Chinese colleagues glued to a screen showing a live-feed from CNN.
The Uyghur rock star Perhat has a lot of fans in Ürümchi. Walking around college campuses, it's not unusual to hear Han students humming from the chorus of “How Can You Let Me Be So Sad” – the song Perhat popularized on The Voice of China back in August. And Uyghur students are in awe of how he has become so famous so quickly. They say things like, “Wow, now Perhat is hanging out with rock stars like Wang Feng who sold out the Bird’s Nest in Beijing; just a few months ago I said hello to him when I saw him buying stuff at the corner store.”
Li Na officially announced her retirement from professional tennis at 11 am today on her Sina Weibo account. The 32-year-old two-time Grand Slam champion cited knee injuries as the reason.
