Jiang Zemin: How China’s Forgotten President Achieved a Cult Following and Meme Immortality

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The current president of China is Xi Jinping. “Uncle Xi” is most-known for his nationwide crackdown on corruption. Who was president before that? If you said Hu Jintao, you’d be right. Hu is remembered mostly for how unremarkable he was – he oversaw a ten-year period of consistent, if unexciting, growth for China, making little... Read more »

Cast of Beijing’s ‘Art’ premier talk success, censorship, sandwiches

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The first authorized English production of Yasmina Reza’s Art begins its four-day Beijing run from tonight, May 11. Since the London premiere of Christopher Hampton’s translation, with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott as the three principals, Marc, Serge and Yvan, Art has raked in over $250 million worldwide, showcased innumerable all-star lineups, stunt... Read more »

The Creamcast, Ep.20: Scotch And Stories

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May 27 saw the gathering of several writers in The Bookworm for an event called Scotch and Stories, presented by the Anthill in collaboration with Whisky Wednesday and with support from Ai Whisky. We're reliving that event in today's podcast, timed with the last of those stories going online on the Anthill and The Bookworm's launch of its new whisky menu.

The Creamcast, Ep.19: Tech In China (Bookworm Literary Festival)

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On March 21 as part of the Bookworm Literary Festival, Mark Natkin (founder and managing director of Marbridge Consulting), Kaiser Kuo (director of international relations at Baidu), and Josh Gartner (senior director of international relations at JD.com) sat down with Eric Jou for a panel discussion called Tech in China. They spoke on artificial intelligence, O2O, censorship, the market, and woolly mammoths -- all of which you can listen to in this week's episode.

The Creamcast, Ep.18: JUE Festival

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JUE | Music + Art is an annual labor of love, a privately run, basically not-for-profit gathering of creatives in Beijing and Shanghai, with live performances, workshops, exhibitions, and talks. Founded in 2009 as a protest against "the big, homogenous mega-festivals emerging in China at that time," JUE Festival has just concluded its 7th program, featuring acts from around the world.

The Creamcast, Ep.17: The Female Voice In Contemporary Chinese Art

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On February 5, 1989, at the opening of the China Avant-Garde Exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, a young performance artist by the name of Xiao Lu fired two gunshots at her work, two telephone booths with figures engaged in conversation inside. Her act -- part of the performance piece titled "Dialogue" -- became synonymous with the exhibition, caused the entire show to be temporarily shut down, and contributed to her and her boyfriend's arrest.

Meet The Poets: Poetry Beijing At The Bookworm Literary Festival

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This Sunday at 2 pm at the Bookworm, as part of the 9th annual Bookworm Literary Festival, seven community poets will join two visiting writers/performers for Poetry Beijing, a celebration of verse and the power of the spoken word. But more importantly, it'll be a spotlight for this community's regular literary events and the people who run them. For example...