“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!” – Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being ~
"It's not just children who like it. The core value of the rubber duck is to bring back childlike innocence to all of us, especially weary adults." – Zeng Hui, head of the Beijing Design Week Organizing Committee
Because Chinese tourists have a terrible rap, the National Tourism Administration has issued a 64-page guidebook on appropriate behavior, featuring some reasonable advice ("keep quiet when waiting to board a plane"), some common-sense advice (be on time), and and some head-scratchers ("do not call Africans 'Negros' or 'black'"). "Don't pick your nose is on the list," too, as everyone seems to be pointing out.
As the coils of economic development have tightened around the cities of Southern Xinjiang over the past dozen years, many Uyghur parents have increasingly found themselves without land, jobs, and stable futures. In many cases the strain of existential insecurity is most sharply expressed in the lives of children.
Despite the hoopla around China's new free-trade zone that opened on Sunday, details are sparse on exactly how the promise of economic liberalization will help boost the economy.
The 11-square-mile area in Shanghai will purportedly become a testbed where interest rates will be set by markets, foreign firms can freely trade the yuan, and outside investors can put money into previously off-limit state sectors.
Tino Sehgal is a pretty big deal. And undoubtedly, 2013 has been his best year yet. In June, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale – for an artist, this is comparable to an Oscar or an Olympic gold medal. Earlier in the spring, he was one of four artists shortlisted for Tate Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize. At 37 years old, he's amassed an impressive resume of institutions where he's exhibited, including a solo show in New York’s Guggenheim Museum in which the main spiral of the building's interior was emptied out for one of his tightly choreographed “constructed situations.”
The Hunan-based Sanxiang Metropolis Daily brings us this picture of a 5.1-kilogram, 90-centimeter-long (nearly a meter!) rat that you just might be seeing in your nightmares.
The above picture, according to a tweet from the official Twitter account of Justin Bieber's Believe Tour, shows the boy prince himself being hoisted on an invisible palanquin up the Great Wall. (PS, Justin Bieber is in Beijing. It appears he was at Spark last night.)
Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called SmartBeijing, where I write hagiographies about obscure noise musicians. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my colleague Morgan, but I've been stumping for Genjing all day, so I'll keep it going here.
