Cultural Revolution

As everybody knows, statistics are a beautiful tool to make your point. The picture you see here is an analysis we made between cities in central and western China, and world cities, on the topic of cinemas. We compared 10 world cities (New York, London, Tokyo, Paris Sydney and so forth) with 10 ‘Go West’ cities, on several topics. One of our findings: Chinese cities fall behind their international peers when it comes to the level of cultural life.

And we’re not the only ones drawing this conclusion. Top leaders is Beijing came to the same conclusion when they proposed to make culture a new economic pillar for the next Five Year Plan (2011 – 2015). From the SCMP.

A pillar industry is loosely defined as one that contributes five per cent or more of the mainland’s annual gross domestic product, a share which is predicted to be worth at least 2 trillion yuan (HK$2.37 trillion) in 2015. The government plans to invest 171 billion yuan this year in the culture, sports and media sectors, according to the Ministry of Finance.

It is all part of a paradigm shift that seems to take place from a focus only on GDP to a more sustainable and diversified development of China. It is exactly the remark we made last month in our interview in the Global Times. Read the rest of this entry »

Music in China

Audience at the Little Bar, May 2009

Last week, we returned to Chengdu, where we looked at the way the cultural scene in Chinese cities is changing. We interviewed artists, gallery owners, musicians and owners music bars.

But there’s more. The Chinese government, and especially its local departments, support music festivals. What kind of festivals? Rock festivals where 10,000′s of youngsters can listen to Chinese rock, folk and techno. The one in Chengdu is called ‘Zebra Festival’. China’s oldest one is called Midi. Read more about the background of music festivals here:

ZHENJIANG, China — A curious thing happened this month at the Midi Music Festival, China’s oldest and boldest agglomeration of rock, funk, punk and electronica. Performers took musical potshots at the country’s leaders, tattooed college students sold antigovernment T-shirts and an unruly crowd of heavy metal fans giddily torched a Japanese flag that had been emblazoned with expletives.

via China’s Music Scene Thrives in Unruly State-Supported Festivals – NYTimes.com.

Eeuw van de Stad (6): Punk in Chendu

This week in Eeuw van de Stad an impression of one of the cultural components of a Worldcity: the Rock bar.  We saw this nice punkband in Little Bar in Chengdu, one of the oldest rock venues in China.

via Punk in Chengdu Go West Project on Vimeo.