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      Vietnam Bans ‘Barbie’ Movie Over South China Sea Map

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      Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film has been banned in the country for its use of a map depicting territory that both China and Vietnam claim as their own.There will be no “Barbie” world in Vietnam this summer.The Southeast Asian nation has banned the release of “Barbie,” the upcoming film directed by Greta Gerwig, because of a scene that includes the so-called nine-dash line, a U-shaped dotted line on a map showing territory in the South China Sea that both China and Vietnam claim as their own.The nine-dash line is used in Chinese maps to mark its claim over as much as 90 percent of the South China Sea.While an international tribunal at The Hague ruled in 2016 that China had no legal basis for its claims, Beijing has yet to concede to the ruling and has instead sought to dominate the waters, carrying out aggressive incursions and developing military installations.Vietnam, with its long-held acrimonious ties to China, said on Monday that the new film would not be released in the country because of its use of the line, according to Vi Kien Thanh, the head of the Vietnam Cinema Department. The decision was made by the National Film Appraisal and Classification Board, which is responsible for licensing and censoring foreign movies in Vietnam.Responding to state media on Monday, Mr. Thanh confirmed that “Barbie” was banned because of “the illegal image of the ‘cow’s tongue line’ in the film,” using the common Vietnamese phrase for the nine-dash line.Vietnam Plus, a state newspaper, wrote that the decision to include the line “distorts the truth, violates the law in general and violates sovereignty of Vietnamese territory in particular.”China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei all have territorial claims in the South China Sea, which include islands and other strategic maritime features.“Barbie,” which stars Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and a host of other celebrities, was scheduled to be released in Vietnam on July 21. Some moviegoers in the country welcomed the government’s ban. Hoang Xuan Bach, a 23-year-old university student, said the producers should have known better than to include the map.“I hope this movie will flop,” he said.This is not the first time Vietnam has banned films for including scenes with the nine-dash line. “Uncharted,” a 2022 action film by Sony featuring the actor Tom Holland, and DreamWorks’ 2019 animation “Abominable,” were both dropped from the nation’s box offices for the same reason.Vo Kieu Bao Uyen More

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      China Ramps Up Culture Crackdown, Canceling Music and Comedy Shows

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      Performances across the country were canceled last week after Beijing began investigating a stand-up comedian.The cancellations rippled across the country: A Japanese choral band touring China, stand-up comedy shows in several cities, jazz shows in Beijing. In the span of a few days, the performances were among more than a dozen that were abruptly called off — some just minutes before they were supposed to begin — with virtually no explanation.Just before the performances were scrapped, the authorities in Beijing had fined a Chinese comedy studio around $2 million, after one of its stand-up performers was accused of insulting the Chinese military in a joke; the police in northern China also detained a woman who had defended the comedian online.Those penalties, and the sudden spate of cancellations that followed, point to the growing scrutiny of China’s already heavily censored creative landscape. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has made arts and culture a central arena for ideological crackdowns, demanding that artists align their creative ambitions with Chinese Communist Party goals and promote a nationalist vision of Chinese identity. Performers must submit scripts or set lists for vetting, and publications are closely monitored.On Tuesday, Mr. Xi sent a letter to the National Art Museum of China for its 60th anniversary, reminding staff to “adhere to the correct political orientation.”Mr. Xi’s emphasis on the arts is also part of a broader preoccupation with national security and eliminating supposedly malign foreign influence. The authorities in recent weeks have raided the corporate offices of several Western consulting or advisory companies based in China, and broadened the range of behaviors covered under counterespionage laws. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, sent a letter to the National Art Museum of China on Tuesday reminding staff there to “adhere to the correct political orientation.”Pool photo by Florence LoMany of the canceled events were supposed to feature foreign performers or speakers.It was only to be expected that Beijing would also look to the cultural realm, as its deteriorating relationship with the West has made it more fixated on maintaining its grip on power at home, said Zhang Ping, a former journalist and political commentator in China who now lives in Germany.“One way to respond to anxiety about power is to increase control,” said Mr. Zhang, who writes under the pen name Chang Ping. “Dictatorships have always sought to control people’s entertainment, speech, laughter and tears.”While the party has long regulated the arts — one target of the Cultural Revolution was creative work deemed insufficiently “revolutionary” — the intensity has increased sharply under Mr. Xi. In 2021, a state-backed performing arts association published a list of morality guidelines for artists, which included prescriptions for patriotism. The same year, the government banned “sissy men” from appearing on television, accusing them of weakening the nation.A bookstore in Zibo, China. Literature is closely regulated by the authorities.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesOfficials have also taken notice of stand-up comedy, which has gained popularity in recent years and offered a rare medium for limited barbs about life in contemporary China. The government fined a comedian for making jokes about last year’s coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai. People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, published a commentary in November that said jokes had to be “moderate” and noted that stand-up as an art form was a foreign import; the Chinese name for stand-up, “tuo kou xiu,” is itself a transliteration from “talk show.”The recent crackdown began after an anonymous social media user complained about a set that a popular stand-up comedian, Li Haoshi, performed in Beijing on May 13. Mr. Li, who uses the stage name House, had said that watching his two adopted stray dogs chase a squirrel reminded him of a Chinese military slogan: “Maintain exemplary conduct, fight to win.” The user suggested that Mr. Li had slanderously compared soldiers to wild dogs.Outrage grew among nationalist social media users, and the authorities quickly piled on. In addition to fining Xiaoguo Culture Media, the firm that manages Mr. Li, the authorities — who said the joke had a “vile societal impact” — indefinitely suspended the company’s performances in Beijing and Shanghai. Xiaoguo fired Mr. Li, and the Beijing police said they were investigating him.Within hours of the penalty being announced on Wednesday, organizers of stand-up shows in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and eastern Shandong Province canceled their performances. A few days later, Chinese social media platforms suspended the accounts of Uncle Roger, a Britain-based Malaysian comic whose real name is Nigel Ng; Mr. Ng had posted a video poking fun at the Chinese government on Twitter (which is banned in mainland China).But the apparent fallout was not limited to comedy. Scheduled musical performances began disappearing, too, including a stop in southern China by a Shanghai rock band that includes foreign members, a Beijing folk music festival and several jazz performances, and a Canadian rapper’s show in the southern city of Changsha.The frontman of a Buddhist-influenced Japanese chorus group, Kissaquo, said last Wednesday that his concert that night in the southern city of Guangzhou had been canceled. Hours later, the frontman, Kanho Yakushiji, said a performance in Hangzhou, in eastern China, had been canceled, too. And the next day, he announced that Beijing and Shanghai shows had also been called off.“I was writing a set list, but I stopped in the middle,” Mr. Yakushiji, whose management company did not respond to a request for comment, wrote on his Facebook page. “I still don’t understand what the meaning of all this is. I have nothing but regrets.”Organizers’ announcements for nearly all of the canceled events cited “force majeure,” a term that means circumstances beyond one’s control — and, in China, has often been used as shorthand for government pressure.Stand-up show organizers did not return requests for comment. Several organizers of canceled musical performances denied that they had been told not to feature foreigners. An employee at a Nanjing music venue that canceled a tribute to the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto said not enough tickets had been sold. A Chinese rock band concert in Qinhuangdao, China, last year. Scheduled musical performances have been canceled, with organizers citing “force majeure.”Wu Hao/EPA, via ShutterstockSome of the foreign musicians whose shows were canceled have since been able to perform in other cities or at other venues.But a foreign musician in Beijing, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said his band was scheduled to play at a bar on Sunday and was told by the venue several days before that the gig was canceled because featuring foreigners would bring trouble.Lynette Ong, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto, said it was unlikely that the central government had issued direct instructions to spur the recent cultural crackdowns. Local governments or venue owners, conscious of how the political environment had changed, were likely being especially cautious, she said.“In Xi’s China, people are so scared and fearful that they become extremely risk-averse,” she said. “Overall, it’s a very paranoid party.”In the past, when nationalism has gone to extremes, or local officials overzealously enforced the rules, the central government would eventually step in to cool down the rhetoric, in part to preserve economic or diplomatic relationships. But Professor Ong said Beijing’s current emphasis on security above all would give it no reason to intervene here.“If people don’t watch comedy, there’s no loss for the party,” she said.Joy Dong More

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      Pema Tseden, Pioneering Tibetan Filmmaker, Is Dead at 53

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      His films captured contemporary Tibetan life as Tibetans saw it, devoid of the stereotypes long associated with their homeland.Pema Tseden, a filmmaker and author who presented an honest look at contemporary Tibetan life despite intense scrutiny from Chinese censors, died on Monday in Tibet. He was 53.His death was announced in a statement by the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he was a professor. The statement did not specify a cause or say where he died.Tibet and its people have often been misrepresented with clichés. For the West, it was utopia, a fantasy based on the depiction of Shangri-La in the British author James Hilton’s 1933 novel, “Lost Horizon.” For the Communist Party of China, Tibetans were serfs or barbarians in need of rescue and rehabilitation, with propaganda films portraying Han cadres as liberators. Pema Tseden (pronounced WA-ma TSAY-ten in his native dialect), who like most Tibetans had no family name and went instead by his two given names, said that as a child, he had longed for accurate representations of his home, people and culture that existing Hollywood and Chinese films didn’t provide.“Whether it was the clothes, the customs, the manners, every element, even the smallest, was inaccurate,” he said in a 2019 interview. “Because of that, at the time, I thought that later on, if someone made films with even a little knowledge of the language of my people, the culture, the traditions of my people, it would be completely different.”In his films, Pema Tseden rarely depicted Tibet’s Chinese population, which swelled after the Red Army seized Tibet in 1951. To elude Chinese censors, he eschewed references to the Dalai Lama, who has been seen in China as supporting Tibetan independence. This allowed him to avoid overtly political critiques while still tackling broader themes, like the loss of traditions and identity in the face of modernization.Genden Phuntsok, left, and J. Jinpa in a scene from “Jinpa,” Pema Tseden’s film about a truck driver who runs over a sheep and then picks up a hitchhiker.Icarus FilmsHe was the first Tibetan filmmaker working in China to shoot a feature film entirely in the Tibetan language. He was also the first Tibetan director to graduate from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, which cultivated the country’s leading directors. But like all artists in China exploring ethnic minorities and religion, he was subject to additional vetting from state censors and required to submit scripts in Chinese for review.“His challenge, of course, was to make films that would reflect a Tibetan sense of identity, a Tibetan cultural sensibility, while not upsetting the Chinese authorities,” Tenzing Sonam, a Tibetan filmmaker and writer living in Dharamshala, India, said by phone. “Pema Tseden navigated that fine line incredibly well.”In “The Silent Holy Stones” (2005), he depicted everyday Tibetan experiences: monks becoming engrossed with television, villagers rehearsing for a New Year’s opera performance. And in “Old Dog” (2011), images of barbed-wire fences stretching across the Tibetan grasslands examined the power of the state and the complexities of privatizing ancestral lands.Pema Tseden’s “Old Dog” (2011) examined the complexities of privatizing ancestral lands.Icarus FilmsHis movies were “not just about Tibet,” Tsering Shakya, a Tibetan historian and scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said in an interview. “This is about China and people who are left behind by China’s economic miracle.”As Pema Tseden’s clout grew, China’s film industry and its audiences began to accept Tibetan as a language used on the big screen. And by combining Tibetan traditions of oral storytelling and song with modern filmmaking formats, his movies gave rise to an entirely new genre that some called the Tibetan New Wave.“The stories his films contained — which are always meticulously framed and exquisitely modulated — speak powerful truths in the gentlest of voices,” said Shelly Kraicer, a Chinese cinema curator and researcher who wrote subtitles for some of Pema Tseden’s work. “He’s a key world filmmaker.”He sought to build a tight-knit network of Tibetan filmmakers, including Sonthar Gyal, Dukar Tserang, Lhapal Gyal and Pema Tseden’s, son, Jigme Trinley, who went on to direct their own films. Drivers, assistants and other members of the crew sometimes juggled more than one role, appearing as extras and coaching actors in regional dialects.“He created from scratch an embryonic Tibetan film circle, film industry,” Françoise Robin, a professor of Tibetan language and literature at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris who knew Pema Tseden for over two decades, said by phone. “He’s very faithful in friendship. Some people worked with him for 10 years.”“Tharlo” (2015), the story of a shepherd who travels outside his isolated village to register for a government ID, premiered at the Venice Film Festival.Tsemdo/Icarus FilmsPema Tseden was born on Dec. 3, 1969, in Qinghai Province, part of a northeastern region of Tibet traditionally known as Amdo. His parents were farmers and herders.He was raised by his grandfather, who asked him to copy out Buddhist scriptures by hand after school, a practice that instilled in him an early appreciation for Tibetan language and culture. He worked as a teacher for four years before studying Tibetan literature and translation at the Northwest University for Nationalities in Lanzhou. He then worked for several years as a civil servant in his home province.Starting in 1991, he published short stories set in Tibet, written in both Tibetan and Chinese, about individuals confronted with sweeping changes. They underscored the importance of forging a connection with nature and animals, showing “the complexity of life in the simplest language,” said Jessica Yeung, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University who knew Pema Tseden for a decade and translated his work. He later adapted some of his stories into films.After attending the Beijing Film Academy in the early 2000s, he released “The Silent Holy Stones” to critical acclaim, as well as several other films. A decade later, “Tharlo” (2015), about the journey of a shepherd who must travel outside his isolated village to register for a government ID, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It won numerous awards, including a Golden Horse Award for best adapted screenplay in Taiwan. Among Tibetans, it also became a seminal work for aspiring filmmakers within a few years.“A Tibetan film should show Tibetan life,” Pema Tseden said in an undated interview that was recently released by Kangba TV, a Tibetan-language broadcaster. “In my case, from my first film onward, I wanted my movies to absolutely include characters who are Tibetan, who would all speak Tibetan, and whose behavior and way of thinking were Tibetan. This is what makes Tibetan films different.”Pema Tseden’s subsequent films benefited from his higher profile. “Jinpa” (2018), about a truck driver who runs over a sheep and then picks up a hitchhiker, was produced by the Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai’s Jet Tone Films and premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Orizzonti Award for best screenplay. “Balloon” (2019), about a family coping with an unexpected pregnancy amid China’s family planning laws, also premiered in Venice. A forthcoming film, “Snow Leopard,” about the tense relationship between humans and predatory animals, is currently in postproduction. At his death, he was working on another film.Information on survivors in addition to his son was not immediately available.Li You More

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      New York Philharmonic, Pushing Cultural Diplomacy, Plans Asia Tour

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      Amid rising political tensions, the orchestra said it would perform in Hong Kong and Taiwan this summer and send a delegation of musicians to mainland China.The New York Philharmonic, saying it hoped to use culture to help ease political tensions, announced plans on Thursday for a summer tour in Asia, including stops in Hong Kong and Taiwan and a visit to mainland China by a small group of musicians.The tour will be the Philharmonic’s first visit to Asia since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when many countries in the region shut their borders. It comes amid rising tensions between the United States and China and concerns about the possibility of a crisis over Taiwan.Gary Ginstling, the Philharmonic’s incoming president and chief executive, said the orchestra hoped to show that music could help strengthen ties between the United States and Asian countries.“At a time when communication and trust are on the decline, our firm belief is that cultural diplomacy is more important than ever,” he said. “Showing that we can span borders and bring people closer through music is at the heart of our mission.”The Philharmonic held a Shanghai residency in 2019. A delegation of nine players will visit the city this summer to lead chamber music concerts and teach classes.Chris LeeAfter a hiatus during the pandemic, American and European ensembles have in recent months explored returning to Asia, a booming market for classical music before the pandemic.The Philadelphia Orchestra, the first American ensemble to perform in Communist-led China, is planning to send a delegation of 12 musicians to Beijing and Shanghai this fall. (Last year, the orchestra canceled a tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its visit to the country in 1973, worried that China’s then-strict coronavirus protocols would create logistical challenges.)The Cleveland Orchestra is planning an Asia tour in 2025 that could include a visit to China, as well as Japan and South Korea. The Boston Symphony Orchestra visited Japan last year, the ensemble’s first overseas tour in four years.The New York Philharmonic’s Asia tour will include performances in late June and early July at the Hong Kong Cultural Center as well as performing arts centers in Taipei and Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan. The orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and Brahms’s Violin Concerto, featuring the violinist Hilary Hahn.Hong Kong is familiar terrain for the Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, who also leads the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.“I look forward to sharing the work of my New York musical family with audiences in both Taiwan and Hong Kong,” van Zweden said in a statement.The pandemic forced the Philharmonic to cancel three previously scheduled trips to China, where it has had a partnership with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra since 2014. Following the visit to Hong Kong in July, a delegation of nine Philharmonic players will go to Shanghai for six days, where they will lead chamber music concerts and teach classes.The Philharmonic is also working to strengthen ties with Taiwanese cultural groups; on Friday, it will present a concert at David Geffen Hall by the Taiwan Philharmonic.Ginstling said the orchestra was considering a full tour in mainland China in the summer of 2024.“It’s too early to commit to that,” he said. “But we’ve certainly made it clear to our friends in Shanghai that when the circumstances warrant and enable it, we will resume our visits with the full orchestra.” More

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      Now Playing in China: Putin-Aligned Artists Shunned in the West

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      As Russia works to shore up its image and rebuild its soft power after its invasion of Ukraine, it is strengthening cultural ties with friendly nations, including China.Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the star Russian maestro Valery Gergiev has been persona non grata in the United States and Europe, fired by many cultural institutions because of his long record of support for President Vladimir V. Putin, his friend and benefactor.But this week, on the heels of a summit between Mr. Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Moscow, Mr. Gergiev received a hero’s welcome in Beijing, where he appeared with the Mariinsky Orchestra for the ensemble’s first foreign tour since Russia invaded Ukraine.Chinese fans showered Mr. Gergiev with cards and bouquets, calling him by his nickname in China, “brother-in-law,” a play on the Chinese version of his surname. Audiences cheered his Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, as well as a surprise rendition of a Chinese Communist classic, “Ode to the Red Flag.” The state-run news media hailed the visit as the beginning of a new era of Russia-China cultural ties.During the tour Mr. Gergiev rebuked his Western critics and vowed to redouble his efforts to promote Russian culture around the world.“It is not Russian music that is facing challenges,” he said at a news conference at China’s National Center for the Performing Arts. “It is the people who think they can stop Russian music.”The Ukraine war has badly damaged Russia’s cultural engine, which once sent ballet dancers from the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky to the world’s leading stages and brought Russian soloists, opera singers and conductors like Mr. Gergiev to leading concert halls and theaters in the United States and Europe.Now, with artists who are seen as too close to Mr. Putin being shunned in the West, Russia is working to shore up its image and rebuild its soft power elsewhere, strengthening cultural alliances with friendly nations and neighbors, including China, the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan and Serbia, with mixed results.Mr. Gergiev’s tour came on the heels of a recent summit in Moscow between China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Sputnik, via ReutersThe Bolshoi Ballet, the storied company whose name is synonymous with ballet, is considering two tours of China this year. The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, an art institution, is working to open a sister branch in Serbia, after losing partnerships in the West because of the invasion. A St. Petersburg ballet company recently brought two works by the Russian choreographer Boris Eifman, “Anna Karenina” and “The Pygmalion Effect,” to Kazakhstan. Star Russian musicians who were once regulars in New York and Berlin, including the pianist Denis Matsuev, who was seen as close to Mr. Putin, are booking engagements instead in Dubai, Istanbul and Belgrade, Serbia, among other cities.China, with its legions of concertgoers and skepticism of Western ideals, has emerged as an attractive market for Russian artists aligned with Mr. Putin. While the two countries have long had cultural ties — Mr. Gergiev has been visiting the country for decades — the timing of his visit, coming a week after the meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, suggested Russia and China were eager for a fresh display of camaraderie as they work to counter American dominance.“Russia is looking for cultural exchanges wherever it can get them, just as it is looking for allies in technology, energy and the military,” Simon Morrison, a specialist in Russian music at Princeton University, said. “Putin is desperate to show that Russia still has friends.”Russia’s attempts to use culture to soften its image abroad face significant challenges, even in friendly countries, experts say, because of its continuing attacks on Ukraine.Classical music, dance, theater and visual art were “some of the last bridges between Russia and the West,” said Vera Ageeva, an international relations scholar at Sciences Po in France. But the disappearance of these cultural exports presents a “huge, incalculable loss for Russia and its soft power,” she said, which cannot be offset simply by expanding cultural ties with allies.Protesters outside an Anna Netrebko concert in Paris last spring.James Hill for The New York TimesAfter Russia invaded Ukraine, cultural institutions in the United States and Europe rushed to cut ties with Russian artists and institutions aligned with Mr. Putin, upending decades of cultural exchange that had endured even during the depths of the Cold War.The Bolshoi and Mariinsky faced cancellations in London, Madrid, New York and elsewhere; a popular program to broadcast Bolshoi performances into more than 1,700 movie theaters in 70 countries and territories was suspended. And several Russian stars with ties to Mr. Putin lost work in the West, including the soprano Anna Netrebko, Mr. Matsuev and Mr. Gergiev, who was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic.While Mr. Putin has repeatedly portrayed Russia as a victim of a Western campaign to erase Russian culture and cancel great composers like Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Russian works continue to be played throughout the United States and Europe.Mr. Gergiev, once one of the world’s busiest international conductors, has hunkered down in St. Petersburg, leading a packed schedule of performances at the Mariinsky, including classics like Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and Glinka’s “A Life for the Tsar.” Mr. Gergiev is the general and artistic director of the Mariinsky, which has been his base for decades, and which has expanded with funding and support from Mr. Putin.“I don’t find that my life has taken a turn for the worse,” he said in a recent interview with a Russian news outlet. “I find myself ready to be at home as much as possible.”Mr. Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater did not respond to requests for comment from The New York Times.The Bolshoi, in a statement to The Times, said that overseas tours were necessary to maintain its image and reputation.“The fact that the Western world has been forced to deprive itself of the opportunity to see classical ballet the way Bolshoi is dancing saddens us,” the statement said. “But we ourselves continue to work actively and tour in those places where they are waiting for us.”Since the start of the war, performing has also become increasingly difficult for artists and institutions inside Russia because of a broad crackdown on free speech and expression by Mr. Putin. A “cultural front” movement has spread in recent months with the aim of mobilizing artists in support of the war.Several artists who have publicly expressed opposition to the war have been fired or forced to leave the country. The Bolshoi Ballet scrubbed the name of the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, once a close collaborator and a former artistic director, from its roster after he criticized the war and left Moscow shortly before he was to premiere a new work; the company recently called in replacements to help finish one of his dances.Russia is now looking to its allies to help prop up its flagship cultural institutions, just as it has turned to China and other countries to make up for lost business since its economy was abruptly severed from the West’s.Mr. Gergiev’s appearance in Beijing, which included four sold-out concerts, drew wide attention.The state-run news media hailed the visit as the “grand return” of the “toothpick conductor” (Mr. Gergiev has been known to conduct with a toothpick instead of a baton). Commentators seized the occasion to rail against the West for “politicizing art and venting their sentiment toward innocent people from Russia.”In Beijing, Mr. Gergiev said he felt he was “coming home.” He toured the Forbidden City, where he said he was reminded of China’s enduring cultural traditions, and visited old friends.At the news conference, Mr. Gergiev said the recent meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi would open the door to more frequent cultural exchange between Russia and China. He spoke about a patriotic Chinese composer who is a favorite of Mr. Xi — Xian Xinghai, who was stranded in the Soviet Union during World War II and died in Moscow. Mr. Gergiev said he hoped one day to lead an orchestra of young Russian and Chinese musicians.“These concerts,” he said of his appearance in Beijing, “mark the restart of international cultural exchange.”Milana Mazaeva contributed research from Washington, D.C., and Li You from Shanghai. More

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      ‘Make People Better’ Review: Clear Science, Confusing Storytelling

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      This muddy documentary dives into a complex story of genomic discovery, biomedical ethics and covert dealings.When the Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced in 2018 that he had successfully taken human embryos with genetically edited DNA and implanted them in a woman’s uterus, it sparked international controversy among scientists and stoked deep-seated fears of normalizing “designer babies,” which would allow the wealthy to buy the ability to choose the genetic characteristics of their offspring. In the documentary “Make People Better,” the director Cody Sheehy dives into this complex story of genomic discovery, biomedical ethics and the covert dealings of the Chinese government.The film chooses its experts well. Antonio Regalado, a science writer, and Benjamin Hurlbut, a biomedicine historian, discuss the scientific and ethical concepts around Dr. He’s work in accessible and engaging language that one doesn’t need to be a genetics expert to understand. Yet a glut of animations and B-roll footage makes the film’s visuals feel convoluted, and a flat narrative structure further muddies the waters.As the repressive Chinese government does severe damage control in the wake of the experiment, Dr. He’s fate hangs in the balance. But just minutes in, Sheehy clumsily reveals what that fate is, deflating the film’s dramatic tension with so little fanfare that the information’s premature landing barely registers.Perhaps the most baffling miss here is that the film omits some major developments that have happened in the story since 2018. Most notably, Dr. He’s release earlier this year from a three-year prison sentence ought to have at least been mentioned in an epilogue.Make People BetterNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Hong Kong: Mirror Concert Accident to Be Investigated

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      Two dancers for the popular boy band were hospitalized, a local news outlet reported. Hong Kong officials promised an investigation.The Hong Kong authorities will investigate why a large, heavy video screen fell from the ceiling during a concert by a popular boy band at a government-run venue, injuring two dancers, officials said on Friday.The accident happened during a performance on Thursday night by Mirror, a 12-member band in the Chinese territory whose popularity has grown during the coronavirus pandemic. In footage from the concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum, audience members scream after the video screen lands directly on one dancer, edge-down, apparently striking his neck. The South China Morning Post newspaper later reported that one of the two male dancers had suffered neck injuries and was in intensive care. It said the other was in stable condition.Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, Hong Kong’s secretary for culture, sports and tourism, told reporters on Friday that one of the screen’s suspension cables had broken. Each of the screens for the venue’s four-sided projection system measures 5 meters by 3.9 meters, or 210 square feet, according to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which manages the coliseum. Emergency workers treated the injured dancers. Vivian/Associated PressJohn Lee, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said in a statement early Friday that he had asked the leisure department and other agencies to investigate the accident and “review the safety requirements of similar performance activities.”“I am shocked by the incident,” Mr. Lee said. “I express sympathy to those who were injured and hope that they would recover soon.”The Hong Kong authorities said in a separate statement that the government had contacted the concert organizers on Wednesday — the day before the accident — about “stage incidents in the past few days.” It did not elaborate, and the leisure department could not immediately be reached for comment.On Tuesday, a member of Mirror, Frankie Chan Sui-fai, fell off the stage at the Hong Kong Coliseum during the second day of the band’s scheduled 12-day series of concerts, The South China Morning Post reported. He fell about a meter and was not seriously hurt, according to the report.Makerville, the concert organizer, apologized for the Thursday night accident in an Instagram post early Friday, adding that Mirror’s remaining concerts at the venue would be canceled. The band’s management did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mirror, which draws on K-pop as an influence, formed in 2018 through a reality show designed to manufacture a hit boy band. Its members sing in Cantonese, a Chinese language spoken widely in the former British colony. The band’s escapist lyrics have been a balm of sorts for an anxious population during a tumultuous period of Hong Kong history.In 2019, the city was consumed by months of mass protests triggered by a proposed law to allow extraditions to mainland China. Then came a thicket of pandemic-related restrictions that have battered Hong Kong’s economy, as well as a sweeping national security law that has curtailed freedoms with breathtaking speed.Mirror’s popularity soared as Hong Kong struggled. The band sold out concert halls, accounting for some of the city’s only large-scale events during the pandemic. Its members’ faces have been plastered on billboards, buses and subway ads.The coliseum where Mirror was performing on Thursday opened in 1983, according to the leisure department’s website. It seats about 12,500 people, the site says, and meets local demand for a “world class indoor stadium.”Zixu Wang More

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      Ni Kuang, Novelist and Screenwriter for Martial Arts Films, Dies at 87

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      Best known for fantastical thrillers that doubled as political allegories, he also wrote hundreds of martial arts films for Bruce Lee and others.HONG KONG — Ni Kuang, a prolific author of fantasy novels imbued with criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and a screenwriter for more than 200 martial arts films, died here on Sunday. He was 87.His death was announced by his daughter-in-law, the actress Vivian Chow, on social media. She did not state the cause but said he died at a cancer rehabilitation center.Best known for his fantastical thrillers, Mr. Ni wrote the screenplays for many of the action movies produced by the Shaw Brothers, who dominated the Hong Kong market. He also created the story lines and central characters for Bruce Lee’s first two major films, “The Big Boss” (1971) and “Fist of Fury” (1972), although the screenwriting credit for both films went to the director, Lo Wei.In the Chinese-speaking world, Mr. Ni was perhaps best known for the “Wisely” series, a collection of about 150 adventure stories first published as newspaper serials. The stories told of the title character’s encounters with aliens and battles with intelligent monsters, but they sometimes also contained pointed political criticism.Born in 1935 to a working-class family in Shanghai, Mr. Ni was given two names at birth, as was the custom: Ni Yiming and Ni Cong. Information on his parents was not immediately available, but it is known that he had six siblings.He began working in his teens as a public security official during China’s land-reform movement, believing in the Communist Party’s promise of a more egalitarian future. But he quickly grew disillusioned after being given the task of writing daily execution notices about landowners, who were blamed for China’s rural poverty and persecuted as public enemies. When he questioned whether they had committed other crimes to warrant a death sentence, his superiors rebuked him.Bruce Lee in “Fist of Fury” (1972), for which Mr. Li created the story line and the central characters. He did not receive screenwriting credit, but he did for more than 200 other martial arts films.Golden Harvest Company“That was the beginning of my distaste for the party,” he said in a 2019 interview with Paul Shieh, a prominent lawyer and television host, for RTHK, the Hong Kong public broadcaster.His troubles did not end there. While stationed in Inner Mongolia, Mr. Ni mated a crippled wolf with two dogs, then raised a pack of their cubs in secret. When the cubs attacked a more senior official, he was punished and made to write long essays of contrition. In public sessions where so-called class enemies were denounced, he got in trouble for giggling. He was also branded as an anti-revolutionary after being caught dismantling wooden planks from a footbridge to burn as fuel during a cold spell.A friend had warned Mr. Ni that he could face heavy penalties for his transgressions and helped him steal a horse so he could escape, Mr. Ni said in the RTHK interview. He returned to Shanghai, where he paid smugglers to help him stow away on a boat to Hong Kong in 1957.At first, Mr. Ni made less than 50 cents a day doing factory work and odd jobs. In interviews, he described in great detail the first meal he had paid for with his earnings: a bowl of rice topped with glistening slabs of fatty barbecued pork.Mr. Ni soon found a vocation as a writer of serialized fiction when The Kung Sheung Daily News accepted a manuscript he wrote, “Buried Alive,” about land reform in mainland China. He threw himself into writing full time, saying in interviews that at the peak of his career he wrote as many as 20,000 words a day. He published the first installments of the “Wisely” saga in the newspaper Ming Pao in 1963.“Back then, I wrote novels as a living, to feed mouths and get through the day, so I had no way of writing exquisitely,” he said, adding that he had time for neither research nor revision while writing. “I could only rely on what was in my head.”Although he never returned to the mainland, his early life experiences there often figured into his writing, even as his fiction became more supernatural. “Old Cat,” a “Wisely” novel first published in 1971, was inspired by a gray-blue Persian cat that had kept Mr. Ni company when he was locked in a hut as punishment. He had spent hours untangling its knotted, matty hair, he said in an interview. The cat in the novel battled aliens.In a speech at the Hong Kong Book Fair in 2019 about his legacy as a science-fiction writer, Mr. Ni argued that his work did not really fit into that genre as it is traditionally defined. He had once avoided writing about aliens, he said, but found them to be convenient narrative devices when he was stuck on a plot.“My science fiction is completely different from Western science fiction or what most people would consider ‘hard’ science fiction,” he said.Having completed only junior high school, he added, he lacked a proper understanding of science. He drew more from ancient Chinese myths and legends.Mr. Ni also brought his imagination to the big screen, earning screenwriting credits for movies that included “One-Armed Swordsman,” which broke Hong Kong box-office records in 1967.Mr. Ni married Li Guozhen in 1959. She survives him. His survivors also include their daughter, Ni Sui, and their son, Joe Nieh. Over the years, Mr. Ni did not hold back in his critiques of the Chinese Communist Party, and he described Hong Kong as a refuge for free thinking. But he was pessimistic about the city’s future under Beijing’s tightening grip.His 1983 novel, “Chasing the Dragon,” was widely cited as a prescient description of the political backdrop that prompted pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, followed by a sweeping crackdown.In the book, Mr. Ni writes about an unnamed metropolis that is reduced to a shell of itself:There’s no need to destroy the architecture of this big city, no need to kill any of its residents. Even the appearance of the big city could look exactly the same as before. But to destroy and kill this big city, one only needs to make its original merits disappear. And all that would take are stupid words and actions coming from just a few people.When asked by Mr. Shieh of RTHK what disappearing merits he meant, Mr. Ni said, “Freedom.”“Freedom of speech is the mother of all freedoms,” he continued. “Without freedom of speech, there is no other freedom at all.” More