World

The 4th Hong Kong Asian Film Festival ends today. Luckily, I had the chance to see a couple films, including Umbrella, the latest from Chinese documentary filmmaker Du Haibin. The film just premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival, where it screened alongside the documentary Useless, by Jia Zhangke (who won the Golden Lion last …

Sotheby’s auctioned off a collection of items linked to Qing dynasty palaces on Tuesday, and Chinese collectors paid sky high prices to snap them up. That follows Stanley Ho’s purchase last month of a sculpture that had been looted from Beijing’s old Summer Palace. The Macau gambling tycoon paid $8.84 million for a bronze horse’s head–a …

A quick snap of Beijing early this morning, an unusually bright and clear early Autumn day. The boring but conspicuous monolith on the right is the new China World Tower, which when completed will be the highest building in the capital but otherwise doesn’t have much to recommend it architecturally. The two drunken looking structures …

Jimi

Michelle

Jaime Florcruz, dean of foreign correspondents in China, now with CNN, formerly TIME Beijing bureau chief (the picture of him was taken in our office), is looking to be one of the 8 foreign torch bearers in the upcoming Olympic torch relay. He and his daughter are both seeking to carry the torch in a selection process …

(Warning: Inside Baseball on Chinese politics: those not interested should change channels now)

There is increasing speculation ahead of the opening of the 17th Communist Party National Conference on October 15th that the fierce factional struggle now going on behind the scenes may result in the elevation of the new Shanghai Party …

The Communist Party’s national congress is coming up later this month, which must be part of the reason why the word “harmonious” is ubiquitous in China. “Harmonious society” is the catch phrase for the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao policy to spread the wealth and eliminate some of the inequities of China’s raging capitalism. It’s a serious …

It’s common knowledge in Beijing that the police get very, very uptight before big political meetings. Every spring before the National People’s Congress, dissidents are harassed and hundreds of sad petitioners rounded up from their hovels and forcibly sent back to their home provinces. This is my first time in Beijing before the mother …

Yao Ming came out and apologized to his team yesterday. So what it exactly did the big one do to merit such contrition? He will miss some pre-season training and a media day because of his obligations to the Special Olympics, which will be held next month in his hometown of Shanghai. Given the sort of behavior that usually leads to an …

FREDERICK.J. BROWN / AFP / Getty Images

Visiting China’s ancient capital of Xi’an for the first time I am reminded that however much you read and hear about a place the reality is always far different. Having spent quite a while researching a novel that was set in part in Chang’an, as the city was called in the Tang dynasty, I …

Survivor, one of the most popular TV shows in the U.S., has just kicked off its fifteenth season, this time in China. The show claims to be the first major American TV series to be filmed entirely in China. Here’s how the episode re-cap describes the show: “Transported back in time, 16 Americans from various walks of life begin the …

While we are alerting you to more of our wonderful prose, be advised that my latest effusion on Beijing and the Olympics is here, there’s a nice accompanying photo essay about Beijing here.

Earlier this month Ling wrote here about an upcoming auction of a statue of a horse’s head looted from the Summer Palace. Now gambling tycoon Stanley Ho has purchased the head for $8.84 million and donated it to China. Our story is here. Also, Geoffrey Fowler has an interesting piece over at the Wall Street Journal on gaming moguls and …