It is the world’s second-biggest economy, the next big threat to global security and a country ruled by an authoritarian regime that is increasingly making its power felt beyond its borders. But the most important part of China is the population of 1.4 billion diverse, tricky and resilient people whose choices are often very distant from the decision-makers in Beijing. These books are an introduction to the forces that have shaped China’s recent past and the people living in its present. What was the Cultural Revolution? The decade of mass…
Tag: Culture
Far Beyond the Pasturelands review – on the trail of the ‘Himalayan Viagra’
Every year, thousands of Nepalese villagers make their way to the Himalayan foothills in search of a fungus called yarsagumba. Known for its aphrodisiac properties, the elusive substance sells in China for a price higher than gold. Following Lalita, a young mother among the countless trekkers, this intimate documentary from Maude Plante-Husaruk and Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis paints a stirring portrait of a community exploited by modern commerce. Living in the largely agrarian village of Maikot, a wistful Lalita thinks back on her adolescent dreams of going to university, but an early…
Yolo review – smash-hit Chinese boxing drama is a tale of personal transformation
Jia Ling writes, directs and stars in this boxing drama with a twist: there’s not really very much boxing in it. In this smash hit from China, we’re introduced to Du Leying (Jia) as a no-hoper; the perspective, in fact, of the supporting characters and the film itself is that it would be hard to imagine a bigger loser. She’s 32, lives at home, doesn’t adhere to traditional beauty norms (particularly as regards body weight), and her boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend. When this affair is…
Netflix’s 3 Body Problem is sci-fi. But beyond the alien threat lies the trauma of modern China | Tania Branigan
It has brain-bending physics, mysterious visitors and futuristic technology. Yet viewers of the new Netflix sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem could be forgiven for some confusion as its opening scenes unfold. A drama about coming contact with aliens catapults us back to China in 1966, at the height of the Cultural Revolution: we see an eminent physicist viciously attacked by zealots before a howling crowd. As incongruous as it seems, this moment is central to understanding the book on which the show is based. Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem has…
Liu Cixin: ‘I’m often asked – there’s science fiction in China?’
Chinese author Liu Cixin’s science-fiction novels have sold millions of copies all over the world, and have won him numerous awards, including the global Hugo award for science fiction in 2015. Now, the English translation of the first book in Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, is back in the Amazon bestsellers charts, after the release of a TV adaptation by the creators of Game of Thrones. But a decade ago, few in the UK had heard of Liu and The Three-Body Problem, which begins as a…
‘Flat and shallow’: Netflix’s 3 Body Problem divides viewers in China
Netflix’s big-budget adaptation of Three-Body Problem, a series of novels by the Chinese author Liu Cixin, has divided opinion on Chinese social media. The eight-episode series, 3 Body Problem, was released in full on Netflix on Thursday. It is based on the first book in Liu’s trilogy, an ambitious sci-fi series spanning civilisation from the 1960s to the end of humanity. The TV series was co-created for Netflix by the Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss, and the True Blood writer Alexander Woo, working with the director…
The Last Year of Darkness review – candid and intimate dive into Chinese club culture
Ben Mullinkosson is a film-maker and skateboarder from Chicago who brings an effortless, freewheeling intimacy to this immersive and sensual study of the underground club scene in Chengdu in central China. The title is enigmatic, but it seems to refer to the imminent closure of a club called Funky Town where his subjects have been hanging out; the darkness is the club’s darkness, which is enfolding and welcoming and reassuring, a neon-detailed night in which nothing matters but youth, beauty and the pleasure of the moment. Mullinkosson is utterly at…
Rare copy of Mao’s Little Red Book expected to fetch more than £30,000
The Little Red Book, a talisman of 20th-century Maoism, may have fallen out of favour in China after the Cultural Revolution, but its popularity with collectors shows no sign of abating. The book, officially entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, was given its popular name due to the bright red cover of mass-produced editions. A rare prototype version is about to resurface in a sale by a west London auction house of hundreds of artefacts from the Cultural Revolution, where it is expected to fetch more than £30,000. The early…
‘Little by little, the truth is being discovered’: the archive rescuing China’s forbidden films
On the wall of an unassuming second- floor room in Newcastle University sits a map, Blu-Tacked, unframed. At first glance it looks like any other map of China. But on closer inspection, the cities labelled on the map are not just the major urban centres. They are the places that have hosted important film festivals over the years, the details of which are annotated in colour-coded text. Covering the final years of the so-called golden era of the scene, the map shows dozens of film festivals that used to be active across China. There was…
Authors ‘excluded from Hugo awards over China concerns’
Leaked emails from the organisers of the prestigious Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy suggest several authors were excluded from shortlists last year after they were flagged for comments or works that could be viewed as sensitive in China. In January the Hugo awards published the statistics behind the 2023 awards, which were held as part of the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in the Chinese city of Chengdu in October. The data showed that the New York Times bestseller RF Kuang and the young adult author Xiran Jay…