Trends and Buzz

Making sense of celebrity relationships

Some kind soul has prepared a chart to help navigate the complicated world of celebrity gossip:

JDM060323chart.png
Beijing music scene soap opera

Yeah, it's old news - the original text version purported to prove that Faye Wong and Zhou Xun were 妯娌. A later black-and-white version was a little hard to read. This latest version has been making the rounds of blogs and forums lately probably in reaction to the news earlier this month confirming that Dou Wei and Gao Yuan had separated a couple years back. And Dou Wei and Dou Peng aren't really related at all - they just share a surname.

Still, it'd make a pretty good TV serial, don't you think?

JDM060323chart2s.jpg

Another chart is needed to outline the relationships between the characters in Zhang Yimou's new movie, Golden Armor, particularly for star Jay Chow, who reportedly didn't know what the movie was about when he agreed to do it after Zhang saw his performance in the music video for Fearless.

Golden Armor takes the Cao Yu play Thunderstorm and sets it in Tang Dynasty China. The chart helpfully shows the correspondence between the roles played by Chow Yun-fat, Gong Li, Jay, and the other actors, and the Zhou and Lu families of the original play.

What it does not do is lay out the conspicuous similarities that have led to accusations that Golden Armor is stealing from Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet.

Links and Sources
Media Partners
Visit these sites for the latest China news
090609guardian2.png 090609CNN3.png
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
The latest recommended blogs and new media
laomo2010x80.jpg
From 2008
Books on China
The Eurasian Face : Blacksmith Books, a publishing house in Hong Kong, is behind The Eurasian Face, a collection of photographs by Kirsteen Zimmern. Below is an excerpt from the series:
Big in China: An adapted excerpt from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China, just published this month. Author Alan Paul tells the story of arriving in Beijing as a trailing spouse, starting a blues band, raising kids and trying to make sense of China.
Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers: Pallavi Aiyar's first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard. Below she gives permissions for an excerpt.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ Korean history doesn't fly on Chinese TV screens (2007.09): SARFT puts the kibbosh on Korean historical dramas.
+ Religion and government in an uneasy mix (2008.03): Phoenix Weekly (凤凰周刊) article from October, 2007, on government influence on religious practice in Tibet.
+ David Moser on Mao impersonators (2004.10): I first became aware of this phenomenon in 1992 when I turned on a Beijing TV variety show and was jolted by the sight of "Mao Zedong" and "Zhou Enlai" playing a game of ping pong. They both gave short, rousing speeches, and then were reverently interviewed by the emcee, who thanked them profusely for taking time off from their governmental duties to appear on the show.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky rsschiclet2.png (on the mainland)
or Feedburner rsschiclet.gif (blocked in China)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Top Links: Links from the top bar
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Jobs: Want ads
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30