This week: Kickoff for Chinatown Arts Week and Think!Chinatown’s website How To Chinatown; avant-garde films from 1960s Taiwan; contemporary Chinese classical music as part of the China Now music festival; Chinese art films at Asia Society; a preview of The Chinese Lady; a book signing with Barbara Pollack and a panel discussion with Chinese SVA graduates; two excellent exhibitions at The Museum of Chinese in America; and more…
+++++
Coming Up
10/24 – 10/31 – Chinatown Arts Week
10/26 – Chinese Theatre Works at Fou Gallery
10/26 – 11/1 – Late Life: The Chien-Ming Wang Story – A biopic on Major League Baseball player Chien-Ming Wang’s comeback efforts
10/28 – A symposium about China-US cultural investment
+++++
Our weekly listing includes open calls and other opportunities for artists, filmmakers, and others involved with Chinese culture in this intro section.
1) Sinophone Musical Worlds and Their Publics – A call for submissions the journal China Perspectives that discuss how cooperation amongst individuals constitute musical worlds, the approach and paradox of political management of popular music, and the role of music in Chinese society. Read the complete call for submissions. Abstracts are due October 31, 2018, and full articles are due February 15, 2019.
2) Re-Envisioning Gender in China – A call for papers for the Second Conference of the China Academic Network on Gender. How do we re-envision gender in China? Conversely, how does gender allow us to re-envision China? Following feminist theorist bell hooks’ impetus that “There is power in looking” and probing “a critical gaze, one that “looks” to document, one that is oppositional”, the second conference of the China Academic Network on Gender (CHANGE) seeks to examine what new dynamics and power relations are transmitted, focused, defocused or blurred when gender is used as the prism to examine Chinese society and cultural practices.
Read the complete call for papers
Abstracts are due October 31, 2018, and first drafts of articles are due February 1, 2019.
+++++
We add talks, films, performances, exhibitions, featuring or relating to Chinese, Taiwanese, diasporic artists and topics to our event and ongoing exhibition calendars as we learn of them.
We post frequently on our Facebook page. So check the page for links we share and get a heads up on events before we include them in these weekly posts. For art, images, and other instances of Chineseness we see, follow us on Instagram.
We’re looking for contributors! If you’re interested in writing an article, contributing photos or artwork to be featured with our weekly events and exhibitions listing, letting us know about an event, send a pitch at beyondchinatown@gmail.com.
UPCOMING EVENTS
1) Photographer Talk: Suzhou Creek in the Flow of Time – In this talk, Suzhou Creek in the Flow of Time: Photographing Shanghai’s Mother River, Lu Yuanmin will share his experiences with the changes happened to and around Suzhou Creek, one of the most-known river local to Shanghai. As additional part of the lecture, the photographer will also showcase some of the images he took of the river during the course of 20 years.
Friday, October 19, 3:30 PM
NYU China House, 8 Washington Mews
+++++
2) Annie Chen Trio at Cornelia Street Cafe – Jazz singer Annie Chen performs.
Friday, October 19, 6 PM
The Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia St.
+++++
3) Imaging the Avant-Garde – Program A: Richard Yao-chi Chen’s Student Films, 1963-1966 (陳耀圻的短片習作) – Born in Sichuan, China, in 1938, Richard Yao-chi Chen moved to Taiwan in 1945 where he studied architecture before relocating to the U.S. He attended the Chicago Art Institute and received his MA in film studies from UCLA in 1967, and then returned to Taiwan to embark on a successful filmmaking career in the Chinese-speaking world. This program features four films Chen made while studying at UCLA. The Archer 后羿 is a hand-drawn animation of the Chinese folktale Houyi Shoots Down the Suns 《后羿射日》. Through the Years 《年去年來》 touches on the theme of Westward expansion by combining facts with fiction. A film about three college students, The Mountain 《上山》 employs a modernist narrative to reflect young people’s longing for freedom in the 1960s. The original copy of this short lay forgotten in a UCLA professor’s garage for decades and was digitally restored by the Taiwan Film Institute in 2017. Liu Pi-Chia 《劉必稼》, a biographical documentary depicting the life of a veteran who joined tens of thousands of others to work on national infrastructure construction projects in the 1960s, is considered Taiwan’s first cinéma vérité film.
Friday, October 19, 7:45 PM
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave.
+++++
4) Facing History: Musical Reflections on the Opium War, the Nanjing Massacre, and the Cultural Revolution – Panel Discussion – How do China’s composers deal with their country’s painful history? In partnership with the China Now Music Festival, Chinese composers Ye Xiaogang, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Tony Fok, Su Wei, and the Festival’s artistic director, Jindong Cai, will talk about how the tumultuous past— the Opium War, the Nanjing Massacre, the Cultural Revolution —has influenced their work. The discussion will take place on the eve of a Lincoln Center Concert featuring these artists’ historically-minded works. The concert will take place Sunday, October 21 at 3:00 PM at Lincoln Center, David Geffen Hall.
Saturday, October 20, 12 PM
China Institute
+++++
5) Ash 《追·踪》– Li Xiaofeng’s Ash tells the story of two unlikely pen pals—acquainted by chance through a used copy of Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection—and their seemingly unrelated lives. Meanwhile, a young police detective pursues the truth behind two unsolved murders. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing China in the late 1990s, the film portrays hopeful youth in a booming city fighting for their dreams of love and success.
Dir. Li Xiaofeng
2017, China, 114 min.
Saturday, October 20, 2 PM
Asia Society
+++++
6) Have a Nice Day 《大世界》 – Liu Jian is known for his painstakingly stylized animations, and he brings his signature dark comedy to his second feature-length animated film, Have a Nice Day. In a small city in southern China, the protagonist Xiao Zhang robs his boss at knife point in a desperate effort to salvage his relationship, by paying for his girlfriend’s plastic surgery. A series of intersecting misadventures ensue, all within a single day. Liu’s simply drawn yet emotionally complex characters and his detailed, gloomy background rich in social commentary, construct a vision of contemporary China complete with its worldly woes beyond the glamorous facade of coastal cities.
Dir. Liu Jian
2017, China, 77 min.
Saturday, October 20, 5 PM
Asia Society
+++++
7) Imaging the Avant-Garde – Program C: Experimental Shorts from the 1960s – This program includes five films by artists who were indirectly involved in the 1960s artistic experiments. The Theater Quarterly did not just serve as a medium bringing in latest news on the Western art world, but also functioned as a platform for artists to present their new creations. Macao-born, Hong Kong based film critic Law Kar (羅卡) and Hong Kong’s renowned writer Xi Xi (西西) both had briefly served as editor of Theatre Quarterly in the 1960s and made experimental films at that time which are included in this program. In addition, Tom Davenport, an American independent filmmaker, spent years studying the Chinese language and culture in Taiwan, was commissioned by National Geographic to film there. This program includes his first documentary T’ai Chi Ch’uan in which he captured the philosopher Nan Huai-chin (南懷瑾) practicing Tai-chi at Taiwan’s northeastern coast.
The last two shorts provide an indirect view of the artistic achievements of Huang Hua-cheng (黃華成), a pivotal figure who co-founded Theater Quarterly and spearheaded the 1960s’ experimental movement in theater, film, and visual art. As none of Huang’s video works have survived, the video documentation of the 1994 seminar “Theater Quarterly and I” 《劇場與我座談會》, in which Huang played his 1967 experimental work Experiment 002 in the original 8mm format, allows us to have a peek of his original work, whereas The Prophet is a video remake of Huang’s first attempt in experimental theater.
Saturday, October 20, 5:30 PM
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave
+++++
8) A Deal – A dark comedy play by Zhu Yi that features a Chinese family’s home buying journey in New York in winter 2015, a time of increased real estate property ownership by overseas Chinese and a sharp decline in the value of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar. It reveals the ideological conflicts between the East and the West in contemporary society by tracking a little stream of the global cash flow.
Saturday, October, 20, 7 PM
Urban Stages, 259 W. 30th St
+++++
9) Imaging the Avant-Garde – Program D: The Mountain + I Didn’t Dare Tell You 《不敢跟你講》 – Mou Tun-fei (牟敦芾), 1969, 78 min, 35mm-to-digital. In Chinese with English subtitles.
Born in China in 1941, Mou Tun-fei moved to Taiwan in 1949. He declared that cinema would be his lifework when he was still an art college student. I Didn’t Dare to Tell You and The End of the Track, both included in this series, are the only two feature lengths he made in Taiwan and are among the nation’s first independent titles. Both films were not released for unknown reasons, though rumor has it that the realistic depiction of the stifling society in I Didn’t Dare to Tell You and the hint of homosexuality in The End of the Track could be the causes. Discouraged by the setback, Mou spent the following years travelling in Europe and South America before working in Hong Kong for Shaw Brothers Pictures (邵氏電影). He then became known for making bloody, gory films.
In this film, a primary school student secretly works a night job to pay off his father’s gambling debts, and as a result constantly dozes off during classes in the day. When the teacher investigates, a series of family disputes ensue.
Only a small number of people saw the film at private screenings upon its completion, still, its realism style spurred discussion among viewers. One reel of the film’s original 35mm copy has lost, and this only available complete copy has an abrupt, inconsistent ending that’s considered a modification by the government to serve as propaganda. This is Mou’s first film after graduating from college. The script was written by Huang Gui-rong 黃貴蓉; some say it was adapted from the children’s novel Cuore (Heart) by Edmondo de Amicis.
Proceded by The Mountain (1966, Richard Yao-chi Chen).
Saturday, October 20, 8 PM
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave
+++++
10) The Chinese Pleasure Book – China Institute joins one books at Aeon Bookstore (newly opened on the Lower East Side!), for an afternoon with Michael Nylan, as she discusses The Chinese Pleasure Book, in conversation with John Vollmer.
About The Chinese Pleasure Book:
This book takes up one of the most important themes in Chinese thought: the relation of pleasurable activities to bodily health and the health of the body politic. All early writings on the subject contrast pleasure not with pain but with insecurity, in an important contrast with Western writings devoted to the same subject. All assume that it is right and proper to seek and take pleasure, as well as short-term delight, but equally that certain long-term relational pleasures are more easily sustained, as well as potentially more satisfying and less damaging. The pleasures that become deeper and more ingrained as the person invests time and effort to their cultivation include friendship and music, sharing with others, developing integrity and greater clarity, reading and classical learning, and going home. Each of these fields of activity is explored through the early sources (mainly fourth century BC to the eleventh century AD), with new translations provided for both well-known and seldom-cited texts.
Michael Nylan is a professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her recent publications include Chang’an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China, Exemplary Figures (a complete translation of Yang Xiong’s Fayan), and Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in China.
John E. Vollmer is an internationally renowned curator and scholar in the fields of Asian art, textiles and costumes, decorative arts, and design.
+++++
11) China Now Music Festival: Facing the Past, Looking to the Future – Part II – Western Classical music is developing in China at a phenomenal speed, but just as exciting is the freshness that Chinese composers bring to the Western world. The Orchestra Now, conducted by Jindong Cai, presents a program of contemporary works reflecting on three wrenching historical events that helped to shape modern China. The concert begins with the four-movement symphony Humen 1839 by Chen Yi and Pulitzer-prize winner Zhou Long. The work is a musical portrait of the heroic effort to confiscate and burn imported opium during the first Opium War. Ye Xiaogang’s work My Faraway Nanjing for cello and orchestra is dedicated to the 300,000 civilian victims who were killed in the Japanese invasion of Nanjing in 1937, during WWII. The Oratorio-Cantata Ask the sky and the earth by composer Tony Fok and writer Su Wei, is a moving interpretation of what is now known as the “sent-down youth” movement which began 50 years ago, during the Cultural Revolution. The piece features a chorus of over 200 members from around the U.S. The composer, writer, and some members of the chorus were among the young people “sent-down” from the cities to work in the countryside. This concert is part of the inaugural season of the China Now Music Festival presented by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in collaboration with the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing. The festival aims to be an important platform for music from contemporary China.
Sunday, October 21, 3 PM
David Geffen Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza
+++++
12) Girls Always Happy 《 柔情史》 – Yang Mingming, one of China’s up-and-coming young female directors, dissects traditional family values by zooming in on the fragile connection between a single mother and her only daughter in Girls Always Happy. Xiao Wu’s dreams of independent living in Beijing is disrupted when her mother decides to move in with her and imposes her way of life in the house. Co-dependency and dysfunctionality reach new heights as the film explores unfamiliar forms of familial love.
Girls Always Happy is the first feature film Yang Mingming (b. 1987 in Beijing, China) has written and directed, where she also plays the role of the daughter Xiao Wu. Previously she edited Yang Chao’s Silver Bear-winning film Crosscurrent (2015), and was the director, cinematographer, and lead actress of the short Female Directors (2012). Her unique perspective on female relationships in contemporary China injects a fresh, youthful narrative in the male-dominant Chinese film landscape.
Dir. Yang Mingming
2018, China, 117 min.
Followed by Q&A with director
Sunday, October 21, 4 PM
Asia Society
+++++
13) Imaging the Avant-Garde – Program E: The End of the Track 《跑道終點》 – Tong and Yong-sheng are inseparable playmates, but when Yong-sheng dies in a training accident with Tong present, Tong feels heartbroken and guilt-ridden. Since both families fail to understand him, and burdened by the solitude after losing his best friend, Tong falls into a downward spiral. At the time, this film was banned due to its homosexual overtones. Some felt that certain segments drew comparison with the short story The Noodle Stall 《麵攤》 by Chen Ying-zhen (陳映真), a key figure of Taiwan’s 1960s literary movement who was imprisoned twice for “subversive activity.”
Mou Tun-fei (牟敦芾)
1970, Taiwan, 91 min, 35mm-to-digital
In Chinese with English subtitles.
Sunday, October 21, 5:15 PM
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave
+++++
14) Imaging the Avant-Garde – Program B: Experimental Shorts from the 1960s – This program presents films by five key figures, including filmmaker Pai Ching-jui (白景瑞, 1931-97), painter Han Hsiang-ning (韓湘寧, born 1939), photographer Chuang Ling (莊靈) and Chang Chao-tang (張照堂), and designer Long Sih-liang (龍思良)(1937-2012). While the movement was short-lived these filmmakers went on to become well-established artists in their own disciplines. Pai, the first person from Taiwan to study film in Italy, built his reputation making classic melodramas and literary adaptations. Han, still active today, is a noted painter, while Chuang and Chang are two highly respected photographers in Taiwan, and Long created many memorable visual designs for films and books.
Sunday, October 21, 8 PM
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave
+++++
15) China Now Music Festival: Facing the Past, Looking to the Future – The Orchestra Now, conducted by Jindong Cai, presents six world premieres by some of the most well-known Chinese composers of our time. This concert is part of the China Now Music Festival presented by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory in collaboration with China’s Central Conservatory of Music.
Program:
Guo Wenjing Zang (World Premiere)
Qin Wenchen Light of the Deities (World Premiere)
Chen Xinruo Yun Shao (World Premiere)
Chang Ping Singularity (World Premiere)
Monday, October 22, 7:30 PM
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave
+++++
16) Borderless Trio Concert – A trio concert exploring links between soundscape and expression featuring Chatori Shimizu on Sho, Minkyung Bae on electronics and JunYi Chow on Cello, melodion and piano. Three composer performers shall exchange musical ideas through free improvisation, and create an experimental dialogue that crosses the boundaries between preconception and innovation, acoustic and electronic, silence and noise.
Monday, October 22, 7 PM
Shapeshifter Lab, 18 Whitwell Place
+++++
17) Crazy Rich Asians: Race, Representation, Resistance? – Inspired by but not limited to the recent success — and tensions– represented by the release of the film Crazy Rich Asians, join for the first event of the Transnational Asian American speaker series: a panel discussion featuring David Henry Hwang, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Monique Truong, Jeff Yang, and James Schamus. Moderated by Denise Cruz.
Tuesday, October, 23, 6 PM
The Diana Center, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway
+++++
18) Barbara Pollack Brand New Art from China – A Book Signing and Alumni Panel Discussion – SVA, MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media celebrates award-winning journalist, art critic, and curator, Barbara Pollack on the occasion of her new publication Brand New Art from China. In celebration of the department’s 30th anniversary, Barbara will lead a discussion with a panel of artists whose work investigates themes surrounding transnationalism and the Asian diaspora. Participating artists will include artist Pixy Liao alongside alumni Baoyang Chen ’14, Tiger Cai ’14, Jesse Chun ’14 and current thesis student Hanwen Zhang ’19.
Tuesday, October 23, 7 PM
SVA MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media, 214 E. 21st Street
+++++
19) 店面 Residency: Intro to Calligraphy Workshop – Seal Script – W.O.W. Project’s third 店面 artist in residence, Vincent Chong is a queer mixed race Chinese American artist, offering workshops in Chinese calligraphy throughout the fall. Vincent is interested in representation through art on paper and how we can use these materials to express the complexities of our identities – queerness, transnationality, etc. On one hand these workshops will function as introductory courses, introducing participants to the traditional tools and strategies used to study Chinese calligraphy. And on the other, they will function as spaces of discussion to chat about how we carry traditions as young people — how we acknowledge and imagine the narratives of those erased through history, and how we establish agency and ownership within these traditions.
This second workshop will focus on an intro to Seal Script. In this class we will focus on the very oldest of Chinese scripts, Seal scripts, ranging from spooky oracle bone characters, to elegant elongated Qin dynasty small seal script.
Tuesday, October 23, 7 PM
Wing On Wo & Co, 26 Mott St
+++++
20) Chinatown Arts Week Opening Night Celebration – Celebrate the first Chinatown Arts Week with musical performances by Mencius Music Society, projections from Asian American art archives, tastings from Ming River Baijiu, Chinatown eats, and drinks with new and old friends. Come by at 5:30pm to hear Think!Chinatown and partners present their new map-based platform, HowToChinatown.NYC. We hope that Chinatown organizations will find this platform as a useful tool to cross promote, find synergies, and work together to strengthen the neighborhood.
Wednesday, October 24, 5:30 – 9 PM
5 Essex Street
+++++
21) ACAW Open Studios – Xin Liu – Join Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) for a visit to Xin Liu’s studio at the New Inc., the New Museum’s cultural incubator.
Xin Liu presents a series of stories, sculptures and performances that align and reposition human experiences with(in) imperceptible and incessant cosmic existences. Everything Beautiful Is Far Away investigates human experiences and perceptions of our planetary condition in relation to the vastness of space. Situated between the intimate, personal longing towards an outer space of the commons and the industrialized space exploration programs that administer access, the project argues for the irreplaceability of an immediate, heart-felt presence of being in outer-space on the grounds of human experience and connection.
Wednesday, October 24, 6 PM
231 Bowery
+++++
22) China Institute’s Monthly Qin & Tonic Mixer – Qin and Tonic? You got that right! Join China Institute every last Thursday of the month to mingle with old and new friends who share an interest in all things China. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided.
Live Guqin music by New York Guqin School
Guided China Institute Gallery tour at 7:00 PM – Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens
Thursday, October 25, 6 PM
China Institute
+++++
23) Huan Rei: Zen Space – Opening Reception and Artist Talk – Independent curator and critic Barbara Pollack hosts an artist talk with Huang Rui at the opening of his solo exhibition of works dating from the 1980s to the present.
Thursday, October 25, 6 PM
Boers-Li Gallery, New York 24 E 81st St
+++++
24) The Chinese Lady – Play Excerpt – MOCA and Ma-Yi will present an excerpt from the play The Chinese Lady which will perform on Theatre Row from November 7 through November 18, 2018. After the reading, there will be a post talk-back discussion with the writer and creatives.
Thursday, October 25, 6:30 PM
Museum of Chinese in America
+++++
25) Immoral Tales – Immoral Tales by Morrison Gong & Erica Sheu with music by Yifan Guo is a multi-projection expanded cinema performance that investigates the parallel between an ancient Chinese mythology and East Asian women’s traumatic sexual experiences.
16mm film, Super 8mm film, 35mm slides, digital video
Duration: approx.20 mins, with intermission
Thursday, October 25, 7 PM
Parsons Fine Arts, 25 E 13th St, 5th Floor
ONGOING FILMS, SHOWS, AND EVENTS
Metrograph presents Shaw Brothers Horror a seven-film series of horror films from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brother studios with screenings from October 19 – 24.
The Shaw Brothers studio, established in Hong Kong in 1958, is perhaps best known for its association with wuxia and martial arts cinema, but in the late 1970s and ‘80s they turned out some of the queasiest, wildest, and most utterly malign supernatural creepshows in the history of the horror genre. When Ho Meng Hua’s Black Magic became a monstrous monster hit in the Chinese-speaking world, the Shaws began the overdrive production of a cycle of malicious movies combining folk tradition-inspired sorcery and stern Buddhist sermonizing, viscera-strewn special effects and vicious violence, creating a stew of sex and slime and all things sleazy and slippery. In our snooty era of highbrow, elevated horror, these are refreshingly low road movies that get down and dirty, squelching in the psychic muck of primal fear and revulsion—which is to say, nothing short of maggot-munching, mind-melting classics of their kind.
1) Project Gutenberg 《無雙》– The Hong Kong police is hunting a counterfeiting gang led by a mastermind code-named ‘Painter’ (Chow Yun-fat). The gang possesses exceptional counterfeiting skills which makes it difficult to distinguish the authenticity of its counterfeit currency. The scope of their criminal activities extends globally and greatly attracts the attention of the police. In order to crack the true identity of ‘Painter’, the police recruits a painter named Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) to assist in solving the case.
+++++
2) Crazy Rich Asians – The first film since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago to feature an all-Asian cast is a rom-com based on Singaporean American writer Kevin Kwan’s best-selling book of the same name.
Rachel Chu is happy to accompany her longtime boyfriend, Nick, to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore. She’s also surprised to learn that Nick’s family is extremely wealthy and he’s considered one of the country’s most eligible bachelors. Thrust into the spotlight, Rachel must now contend with jealous socialites, quirky relatives and something far, far worse — Nick’s disapproving mother.
At local multiple theaters in the New York area
ART EXHIBITIONS
Group Shows, Local Artists, and Other Art Events:
Artist Qiren Hu‘s installation American Ginseng which “further[s] the dialogue about value, belief systems, notions of meaning, authenticity, and consumer desire that evolve from market constructs”; science and tech inspired artist Ani Liu; Mo Kong who talks about politics in coded geologic form and weather narratives; photographer Arthur Ou; and Christine Wong Yap will be part of Queens International 2018 at the Queens Museum which runs from October 7, 2018 – February 24, 2019.
Qiren Hu – ‘American Ginseng’
+++++
Next time you’re in the Times Square or Grand Central subway stations, take the S Train shuttle and see artist MengChih Chiang‘s (孟芝江) Taiwan-themed design for the train done for the Taiwan Tourism Bureau and possibly win roundtrip tickets to Taiwan by taking a photo of yourself with the wrapped S train and post the photo on Instagram between Monday, October 1 – Sunday, October 28 with the hashtags #taiwanstrain and @ttb_na.
Visit Chen Dongfan’s Doyers Street street mural, The Song of Dragon and Flowers
+++++
Opening and Newly Listed:
1) Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age (Museum of Chinese in America, 10/18/18 – 3/24/19) – Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age explores the seemingly impossible, yet technologically crucial Chinese typewriter – a machine that inputs a language with no alphabet, yet has more than 70,000 characters. For centuries, written Chinese has presented fascinating and irresistible puzzles for engineers, linguists, and entrepreneurs alike. With help from the global community, China solved these puzzles, and Chinese became one of the world’s most successful languages in the information age. Radical Machines explores the design, technology, and art of Chinese characters in the information age. Through a collection of rare typewriters and computers — and a diverse array of historic photographs, telegraph code books, typing manuals, ephemera, propaganda posters, and more — we gain unprecedented insight into the still-transforming history of the world’s oldest living language.
+++++
2) Interior Lives: Photographs of Chinese Americans in the 1980s by Bud Glick (Museum of Chinese in America, 10/18/18 – 3/24/19)- In 1981, the New York Chinatown History Project (now the Museum of Chinese in America) commissioned photographer Bud Glick to document the street life, people, and domestic scenes of Chinatown during a time of major changes in the neighborhood. A new wave of immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China were moving into Chinatown, opening up new businesses just as older shops were closing down. This wave brought new life to Chinatown, and it also marked a shift. The bachelor society culture of the Chinese exclusion-era was giving way to family-oriented community. General stores serving a mostly male community struggled to stay in business as arcade halls started popping up.
Glick’s remarkable photographs capture this pivotal moment in Chinatown’s history. Recently he has re-connected with some of his subjects from over 30 years ago, and plans to conduct interviews with them about their lives, then and now.
+++++
Closing soon:
Furen Dai: The Institute of Marriage (Gallery 456, 10/5 – 10/26)
One Side of My Camera: Shanghai in the 1990s and 2010s (NYU China House, 10/9 – 10/30)
Shang Yang: New Works (Chambers Fine Art, 9/15 – 11/3)
Current shows:
Visit the exhibition calendar for details on the current shows listed below. Check the museum’s or gallery’s website for hours of operation.
Furen Dai: The Institute of Marriage (Gallery 456, 10/5 – 10/26)
One Side of My Camera: Shanghai in the 1990s and 2010s (NYU China House, 10/9 – 10/30)
Shang Yang: New Works (Chambers Fine Art, 9/15 – 11/3)
Chow Chun Fai (Eli Klein Gallery, 9/8 – 11/17)
Shen Chen – Tradition and the Individual Talent (Fu Qiumeng Fine Art, 9/21 – 11/21)
Metamorphosis: Liu Dan’s Fantastic Landscape and the Renaissance (Nicholas Hall, 9/13 – 11/23)
Wei Jia – A Way of Life (Fou Gallery, 10/13 – 12/23)
Christopher K. Ho: Aloha to the World (Bronx Museum, 10/3/18 – 1/6/19)
Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8/26/17 – 1/9/19)
Qiren Hu Ani; Liu; Mo Kong; Arthur Ou; and Christine Wong Yap at Queens International 2018 (Queens Museum, (10/7 /18 – 2/24/19)
Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age (Museum of Chinese in America, 10/18/18 – 3/24/19)
Interior Lives: Photographs of Chinese Americans in the 1980s by Bud Glick (Museum of Chinese in America, 10/18/18 – 3/24/19)
Lead image: Toll booth along the north-south G4 highway in China