1. Relocated to Hong Kong, so as I hope to start posting regularly again, they'll likely be crass commentary on local exhibits, shows, and films peppered in. 文化沙漠？(A prominent Chinese scholar spat that Hong Kong was a "cultural desert" a few years ago, which has prompted countless millions of dollars being injected into "cultural" events throughout the city, special immigration schemes for artistic talent, and of course, the hype around the mega development the western parts of Kowloon.) 2. Edison Chen has bounced back from a rocking sex scandal and gone the way of James Franco, attempting to restyle himself as a pop artist. A choice work from his exhibit, "The Treacherous Treis," showing now in Singapore, Maona Lisa. I want to see him climb through the ranks and get caught in flagrante behind the curtain at some Sotheby's auction.
3. Delicious pop-up books as profiled in the New York Times. See and touch Yunnan in three dimensions, and also two dimensions, then three again.
4. Takashi Murakami X Versailles!
5. Matt Yglesias has quite a good post that ties together two recent pieces of major news in the Asian philanthropy world (my new world) - first the seemingly enormous failure of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates' recent trip to China (where they hoped to bring a good slice of wealthy PRCers into their donating pledge). Second is the recent set of rumors that Jet Li's ONE Foundation may pull out from operations from the Mainland, given the series of administrative and bureaucratic trip wires they've run into in their tenure. As Yglesias points out, charity is in some senses illegal in China - only a very small percentage of organizations can formally fund-raise at all, which is often forgotten when people discuss the seemingly vibrant sector of civil society constituted by an emerging network of grassroots NGOs.
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