Cinema Romance Gaining Popularity in China

December 9, 2010

Romance is in the air in China’s cinemas, and Tom Carter showed us how the Western Romeo and Juliet concept of romance got its start in China in 1995 when Harlequin (US  Romance publisher) received permission “to bring romance to millions of Chinese women”.

That beginning grew to more than a thousand romance novels written by mainland Chinese authors last year.

The growing interest in fictional romance has also spilled seriously into mainland Chinese film.

Cfensi (a source for Chinese entertainment news) says that recently, modern day romance movies in China have taken off. “Cinema goers in China want the choice of light-hearted entertainment from the cinema, and the Chinese film industry is rapidly accommodating that niche in the market.”


Interview with Tony Leung, who often plays the leading man in movies with beautiful actresses.

In fact, one star benefiting from this demand for romance may be “Tony Leung (who) has been called the Clark Gable of Asia, and it’s not hard to see why: he’s handsome, with the enviable frame of a man who can put on anything knowing it will both flatter him and fit him.” Source: The Times.uk

Then Tiger Cinema offers a list of Chinese Romance movies with links to “try now”. The titles for a few of these movies are revealing: If You Are the One, Some Like It Hot, All About women, L For Love – L For Lies, Call For Love, and My DNA Says I Love You.

The summary for If You Are the One says, “A story about love in comical situations depicts how difficult it often is to find the right person, but also how often we don’t realize it when love hits us at the most unexpected times.”

Cfensi says, “With China’s total box office up 44% in 2009, and 1.65 cinema screens added per day, with no signs of slowly down, this should only be one sign to look forward to of the growing diversification of China’s rapidly rising film industry.”

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Guqin means Ancient Musical Instrument

November 30, 2010

Chinese history is rich in calligraphy, music, poetry and painting.

Legend says that the Guqin has a history of 5,000 years. Chinese writing dates it to nearly 3,000.

The body of the Guqin is a long and narrow sound box made of Catalpa wood with two holes, one large and one small. The large hole is called the” phoenix pool” and the small one the “dragon pond”.

UNESCO says the Guqin represents China’s foremost solo musical instrument tradition.

This seven-stringed instrument was played by noblemen and scholars and was not intended for public performances. Twenty years of training were often required to become proficient.

Since it is known that Confucius played the Guqin, the instrument is sometimes referred to by the Chinese as “the father of Chinese music” or “the instrument of the sages”.

For millennia, the strings of the Guqin were made of various thicknesses of silk.

However, in recent times, the silk has been replaced with nylon wound around steel strings. Some say without silk, the Guqin doesn’t sound as rich.

The Guqin was one of four subjects the ancient scholars perfected. The other three were chess, calligraphy and painting.

In fact, for centuries many Chinese felt China was so civilized due to these practices that no other country would bother them.

However, after Mao came to power and launched the Cultural Revolution, the Guqin fell out of favor as the literati were persecuted.

Discover Chinese Drums

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 3/3

November 24, 2010

The reputation of the Chinese products that Admiral Zheng He took with him on his voyages brought him considerable honor and made him welcome everywhere he visited.

On his sixth voyage, he reached the African coast and twelve hundred envoys from sixteen African and Asian countries returned to China with Zheng He’s fleet.

In Beijing, the Ming Emperor presented these envoys with 40 thousand roles of silk and brocade.

Even before the Ming Dynasty, China had been sending diplomatic missions overland to the West for centuries and trade had extended as far as east Africa.

However, never before had a government-sponsored mission the size of Zheng He’s fleet been organized.  His voyages were a vivid demonstration of the economic and cultural prosperity of the Ming Dynasty.

 

In 1420, the year the Forbidden City was completed, the Yongle Emperor’s Bell was successfully cast. 

The Forbidden City is a testament to Chinese architecture and engineering while in Europe it was still the Middle Ages.

The Great Wall, which the Ming Dynasty had continued to build and strengthen, stretched from China’s eastern coast to the far northwest.

In 1637, the largest encyclopedia of ancient China was published — a comprehensive book covering science and handicraft technologies.

Another encyclopedia was published on agriculture.

A third described China’s geology in detail.

A fourth was the most comprehensive medical book in Chinese history, the Compendium of Materia Medica.

The greatest of China’s ancient literature was also written and published during the Ming Dynasty.

Return to Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 2/3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 2/3

November 23, 2010

The Ming Dynasty was the golden age of porcelain making. Each area and/or city in China that produced porcelain had its own specialty.

Most of the porcelain products that Admiral Zheng He took on his voyages were from China’s capital of porcelain in Jingdezhen.

By the time of the Ming Dynasty, there were about 20 kilns in Jingdezhen producing porcelain for the exclusive use of the Imperial family.

However, porcelain was also produced for the common people and for trade.

Again, the process of porcelain production was similar to a modern day assembly line. Sorry, Ford.

Chinese porcelain became famous throughout the world.  Merchants from all of Europe and the Middle East were doing business with China.

For example, the amount of china one nation, the Netherlands, imported came to about 16 million pieces.

While Zheng He was on his voyages, the Forbidden City, the largest palace in the world, was being built in Beijing. Classical Chinese construction involved eight separate tasks, which have changed little in thousands of years.

Jin Hongkui, Deputy Curator of the Palace Museum says, “The golden yellow tiles of the Forbidden City contain many details that might go unnoticed by a less observant eye.

“For instance, each tile on the roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony has a miniature dragon sculpted on the tile’s head…

“These small details are a sharp contrast to the grand scale of the palace and this highlights the harmony of artistic and architectural effort that went into the Forbidden City.”

At the same time, the Temple of Heaven was being built in another part of Beijing.

Return to Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 1/3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Returning Lost Honor

November 22, 2010

I’ve been reading the news of the Qing Dynasty vase that sold for $85.9 million recently. That vase may have belonged to the Qianlong Emperor, who ruled China from 1735 to 1795.

Blogs and the Western media are gushing about the auction price as if that were all that counts.

The New York Times said, “The vase’s price exceeded the record for Chinese antiquities set just last month in Hong Kong, when another Qianlong vase sold for $34.2 million.”

Posh Stuff Online says the (bidding) at Bainbridge’s auction was a battle among Asians.

Instead of focusing on the price, we should understand the reason why Chinese buyers would spend so much for a piece of China’s history with an imperial seal on it.

 

One theory says that the vase may have been among the treasures looted by British troops when they sacked (and destroyed) the imperial palaces in Beijing during the second Opium War, from 1856 to 1860.

I think the theft of the 85.9 million dollar vase is a fact.

There is no other way to explain how an imperial vase from the Qianlong Emperor ended in England.

The Opium Wars, which started in 1839, were the beginning of a long dark period in China’s history that would not end until after 1976 when stability returned and China started rebuilding.

A once proud and powerful culture that has survived from the Qin Dynasty in 221 B.C. to 1839 (nineteen dynasties) was brought low and the Chinese were treated by the West as if they were second class savages to be indoctrinated (another word for brainwashed) into Western, Christian ways.

No, it wasn’t about the money. Whoever won the vases at those two auctions has returned some honor to a modern China discovering how to stand tall and proud again.

Why did the winning bidders do it? Because they can.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese history, cultural differences, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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