Shanghai’s stand-up comedian Zhou Libo will make a rare appearance in Beijing later this month to perform with the China Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Yu Long.

Titled A Musical Discourse Between Zhou and Yu, the performance will be held at the Forbidden City Concert Hall on Saturday. “I hope Zhou’s participation will shorten the distance between the audience and symphony music, and let the audience have more fun while appreciating music,” says Yu, artistic director of the China Philharmonic Orchestra and initiator of the concert.

The program will include some of the most popular works of Western classical music, such as Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, Johann Strauss’ Radetzky March and Bizet’s Carmen Overture.

During the performance, Yu will introduce the basics of symphony music and the different sections of a symphony orchestra, while Zhou will interject with his personal interpretations.

“As always, I will relate the topics to current affairs,” Zhou says. “For this performance, I will compare the different sections of a symphony orchestra to the parts of a society, and reveal the relationship between an orchestra and a harmonious society.”

Zhou topped Google’s top 10 most searched words in 2009. Usually a solo performer, he talks about the lives of urbanites in a mixture of Shanghai dialect and standard Mandarin. He has been a star of the stage in Shanghai since 2008 with his haipai qingkou or “Shanghai-style stand-up comedy”. His book, Hui Dictionary, about Shanghai slang, has also become a bestseller.

His use of Shanghai dialect has been a barrier for people from other areas to appreciate his humor. This does not appear to disturb Zhou, however, who says he is happy with his Shanghai crowd and has no intention of expanding his audience.

But the collaboration with Yu is different because it doesn’t promote Shanghai-style comedy, but will help popularize classical music. “This will not be a performance of Shanghai-style stand-up comedy, and I will use putonghua throughout the performance,” Zhou says, referring to the upcoming concert in Beijing. “But my logic and humor will be the same.”

Zhou says that he has always been a lover of classical music, and his music knowledge is “amateur among professionals, but professional among amateurs”.

For this concert, which aims at popularizing symphony music, Zhou says he will try to “strip off the noble dress of classical music and show its real body” – with respect.

The concert is a charity performance, with all income donated to the China Arts Foundation to support music education.

Stage

Irish dance

Riverdance, the dance extravaganza from Ireland, will present a show featuring traditional Irish tap dance that combines elements of Spanish Flamenco, classical ballet and modern dance and features the glorious history of Ireland. The show premiered in Dublin 15 years ago, and has toured more than 90 cities.

7:30 pm, Feb 5-11. 180-1,680 yuan. Beizhan Theater, 135 Xizhimenwai Dajie, Haidian district. 6833-6969

北展剧场，海淀区西直门外大街135号

History repeated

The music and dance epic Road to Revive narrates the nation’s resurgence over the past 170 years, since the Opium War of 1840. Zhang Jigang, who acted as the deputy director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, serves as chief director of the show. The strong cast includes such influential singers and performers as Peng Liyuan, Song Zuying, Yan Weiwen and Ding Jianhua.

7:30 pm, until Jan 30. 80-280 yuan. National Center for the Performing Arts, west of Tian’anmen Square. 6655-0000

国家大剧院, 天安门广场西

Exhibitions

Contemporary Chinese art

From realistic portraits of migrant workers to prints depicting the romance of Russian-style railway stations, the biggest national art expo in China is showcasing some of the nation’s finest artworks produced in the last five years.

9 am-5 pm, until Feb 3 except Monday. National Art Museum of China, 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district. 6401-7076

Joint show

The Iberia Center for Contemporary Art’s recently launched Toyota Art Project presents Asian Landmarks for Art, an exhibition of some 30 works by 20 artists from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

The exhibited oil and acrylic paintings, videos, sculptures, and installations explore the relation between man, machine and nature, says curator Xia Jifeng.

10 am-5 pm, until Feb 28. 798 Art Zone, 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang district. 5978-9530

Events

Burns Supper

This evening party is in honor of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. A three-course dinner and dancing party at Renegade Ceilidh will follow. It is a great way to unwind and meet new people.

E-mail jenny@chinabookworm.com for more details.

6:30 pm, Jan 29. 200-250 yuan. The Bookworm, Building 4 The Village at Sanlitun, Courtyard 19, Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang district. 6586-9507

Top French chef

There is no need of taking a tiring flight to Paris to enjoy French cuisine. Come to the Summit Club to sample world-class cuisine by Marc Veyrat. Veyrat is one of world’s most high-profile chefs, having won a three-Michelin-star twice. He was also elected “Best World Chef” by Wine Spectator and Morgen Post.

Seating is limited to 50.

6:30 pm, Jan 29. 3,880 yuan. The Summit Club, 2 Xinyuan Nanlu, Chaoyang district. 5824-9888 ext. 163/190

Dine to the beat of Bhangra

Indulge in an unlimited buffet of excellent north Indian cuisine featuring 21 items. Also enjoy unlimited beer and soft drinks plus live Punjabi Bhangra dances.

Special discounts are offered to groups of 30 or more.

5 pm, Jan 29. 68-88 yuan. Punjabi Indian Restaurant, C-8 Chaoyang Gongyuan Lu (opposite 21st Century Hotel West Gate), Chaoyang district. 5867-0221

Peking Opera is “very likely” to be included on the World Intangible Cultural Heritage list this year, the president of the Peking Opera Troupe told METRO yesterday.

Wang Yuzhen, who is also a member of the ongoing third session of 11th Beijing municipal committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee, said its inclusion could be completed in the second half of the year.

Jiang Gongmin, head of the Beijing municipal bureau of culture, who is in charge of the application process to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Culture Organization (UNESCO), confirmed the news but refused to give further information.

Qian Rong, director of the intangible culture heritage office within the Beijing municipal bureau of culture, has been following up on the application process.

She said she has not yet received any news from UNESCO.

Last year, UNESCO included 22 intangible cultural heritage items and three in need of urgent safeguarding on the list of World Intangible Cultural Heritage.

China is the country with the most items on the list.

Peking Opera and traditional Chinese medicine were named in October as pieces of cultural heritage that had made it through to the next round of the application process.

In 2001, UNESCO named Kunqu Opera, the oldest and most influential form of Chinese opera that emerged 600 years ago, as a masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

Last year, Yueju Opera and Cantonese opera were also included on the list.

Wang, who is also a Peking Opera master, said she would love to see Peking Opera acknowledged around the world as an influential form of theatrical opera. But she said inclusion on the list would not mean the art form would be consigned to the museum as an old-fashioned art form.

“No matter whether Peking Opera finally appears on the list or not, we will have to keep pushing the business in a commercial way,” she said.

She said most Peking Opera troupes in China would not be able to survive without financial support from the government.

Former prima ballerina Liu Yan was paralyzed while preparing for her solo performance at the Olympics Opening Ceremony. She is now, once more, in the limelight. Lei Lei reports

Liu Yan was scheduled to perform the solo dance, Silk Road, for the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, but was instead lying paralyzed in hospital.

Two weeks before the performance, at the National Stadium in Beijing, the 27 year old made a leap onto a malfunctioning moving stage and fell down a steel shaft that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

But that nightmare did not mark the end of her association with the Olympics. Last month, Coca-Cola selected her as torchbearer for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.

“Missing the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was an accident and being selected as a torchbearer for the 2010 Winter Games is a surprise,” Liu said, as she carried the Olympic flame for 400m in Montreal, on Dec 10.

“I’m very happy to be linked with the Olympics again. After the accident, I feel both dancing and sports are important to my future life.”

Considered China’s leading classical dancer, she was invited to be the only solo performer at the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony.

She landed on her back in the tragic accident and was rushed to hospital, where doctors performed emergency surgery for six hours.

They found that Liu’s vertebra was severely injured and she was unlikely to walk or dance again.

Recalling that moment, Liu admits it was very hard to accept.

At first I didn’t realize the injury was so severe until I read some mobile phone messages my friends sent me,” Liu says. “They all said something like ‘we will all be with you’ and ‘we will support you forever’. Only then did I realize that something had gone terribly wrong.

“When I got to know the truth, I couldn’t accept those honest words, and instead sought encouragement like ‘you will stand and even dance again’.”

Standing up again was Liu’s only goal at that time.

“The biggest disappointment for me is that my doctors have given up hope,” Liu said during an interview a year ago. “They think I will stay in a wheelchair for life, but I’ll never give up. I’m still hopeful.”

But doctors say the chance of such a breakthrough is slim since the nerves that connect her vertebrae are severely damaged.

She has now learned to accept the reality, but refuses to surrender to it.

“When I realized I couldn’t escape this reality [of being wheelchair bound], I decided to face it and shoulder it,” Liu says on her blog at Sina.com.

“Although I’m still working and dancing, it is really different.”

Liu first started dancing at the age of 9, and at 18, enrolled at Beijing Dance Academy, earning praise for her sensitive interpretations of classical Chinese dance-dramas. At 23, she took the nation’s top dance honor, the Lotus prize, for an original dance, depicting the life of a girl who loses her true love in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

All this meant she was the top choice as solo dancer at the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

“Liu is a perfect dancer. July 27, 2008 (the day Liu fell) was not fair to her,” says renowned choreographer Zhang Jigang and vice-director of the Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony. “Liu will always be the solo dancer of the Opening Ceremony in our hearts.”

“She was the most talented dancer,” Zhao Ming, one of China’s leading the choreographers, says of Liu. “She had the perfect waist and the most flexible legs.”

After months of rehabilitation, Liu was invited to watch a dance drama. At first she refused but finally decided to take a first step back into dancing.

“I couldn’t hold back my tears when I saw the dancers stride on to the stage,” Liu says. “But now I can stay calm when I watch a dance performance.”

But Liu was not satisfied with just being a spectator. Some 15 months after the accident, the dancer was back on stage.

Last Nov 6, Liu joined the performance of Dancecross at the Beijing Poly Theater. In a beautiful red dress, she sat in a wheelchair and performed with her upper body.

“At the beginning I dared not look at myself in a mirror, but now I can dance again. I feel very happy,” Liu says.

Liu is pursuing a doctorate degree at the Graduate School of China Academy of Art and will take the exam in March.

“The time for preparation is limited,” Liu says. “I’m going to focus on my studies after my return from Montreal.”

According to her blog, she will hold classes once a week at Beijing Dance Academy from March 6. She will also offer a course on the history of dance, movement and gestures.

“I believe I will be very happy with students. I will be very happy while teaching them,” she says on her blog.

Taiwan actor Ming Dow and actress Joe Chen have joined hands to endorse a wedding dress brand. Both stars are known for their roles in idol dramas.

Chinese film actor Donnie Yen and actress Vicki Zhao appear on the cover of the speical Valentine issue of “Cosmopolitan”.

Chinese film actor Donnie Yen and actress Vicki Zhao appear on the cover of the speical Valentine issue of “Cosmopolitan”. ‘14 Blades’ stars look so elegant and confident.[Photo: Cosmopolitan/qq.com]

Larger than life fiberglass sculptures and cheongsams studded with ceramic shards stand against an animated LED installation and a flashing neon-light slogan.

They are part of the installations and easel works on display at the aptly named exhibition Head On, which is full of visual collision, at the Red Gate Gallery.

Tsewang Tashi, a gifted young oil painter from Tibet, confronts the audience with his large portraits (pictured left). The human figures created by his brush, in rose and lavender, have an intense gazes and shimmering skin, making a tense visual impact.

The series Night Trip (pictured middle), by Han Qing, stands in vivid contrast to Tashi’s portraits. An aquamarine blue fills the canvas, fading out at the edges suggesting a traffic jam on a night street. Viewers will feel like they are standing in the middle of a street dotted with a kaleidoscope of headlights.

The svelte silhouettes of Li Xiaofeng’s ceramic-cheongsam artwork, Classical (pictured right), are a new take on the Cizhou antique shards of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Individually painted with distinct calligraphy, the shards are pieced together in ebony tones to form the classical Chinese cheongsam.

10 am-5 pm, until Feb 28, Levels 1 and 4, Dongbianmen Watchtower, Chongwenmen, 6525-1005

While many professionals look for emerging trends that will help define the new year, top interior designers say the overriding pattern will remain the same in 2010 – how to meet client needs and help them express themselves in their own homes.

As a star designer at DYRS& Ideal idea, one of the leading home design and dcor companies in China, Meng Ye agrees that if there is a trend it continues to be helping clients meet their individual needs.

“An interior designer is like a mind reader,” said the 38-year-old who has 16 years of experience in interior design. “You need to know your clients so that you can make something to suit their tastes and to represent who they are.”

Massimo Roj, CEO of Progetto CMR Architecture, the biggest architecture company in Italy, which only expanded to Beijing in 2004, holds the same belief.

“Unlike public buildings, interior design is something personal. You need to catch and understand your clients’ needs and make their dreams come true,” Roj said.

He says one of the biggest mistakes an interior designer can make is to show off and attempt to impose their own tastes rather than putting the client’s needs first.

But that might not be as easy as it sounds. When Roj designed a house for a football player in Italy, his client only told him: “We have four people in our family. Two kids, my wife and me.”

Roj then learned the wife has 400 pairs of shoes, so he designed a room specially for her shoes so that she can pick whichever she would like to wear. “The wife loved that room,” he said proudly.

Yet clients often express only their objective requirements.

How to make the overall style suit their demands requires creativity. It is the most difficult part of interior design – the artist’s touch.

“If you are clear about what they really like, we can finish your design in a month. If you are not, it will take a long time,” Roj said.

Meng’s approach to understanding his clients is observation. “I note the car they drive, the watch they wear or the clothes they pick,” he said.

“If they drive cool cars and wear brand-name clothes, then I know I need to give them something fashionable. Some don’t spend a family fortune on cars or clothes, so I know I need to come up with something low-key and stylish,” Meng said.

Roj understands his clients through conversation.

He admits this is very difficult when 95 percent of his clients are Chinese who are guarded about their personal lives.

“You need to come into people’s lives. At the beginning, they may ask ‘Why? Why do you want to know?’ But they will understand gradually,” he said.

But he knows designing for a Chinese family is not as simple as making good conversation. There are a range of cultural differences from the West that he needs to overcome and different aspects he needs to consider.

“There are a lot of things like the master bedroom must face south. It takes time to understand that and I can hardly say I’ve learned them all,” he said.

Becoming Jane Eyre,” (Penguin Books, 256 pages, $15) by Sheila Kohler: Charlotte Bronte was a dutiful daughter of the Victorian age. Her best-known character, Jane Eyre, endures as a woman who transcends time and social order. How Charlotte released Jane into the world is the subject of Sheila Kohler’s new novel, “Becoming Jane Eyre.”

Charlotte Bronte was the third of a poor curate’s six children. Her childhood was marked by her mother’s death from cancer and two sisters’ deaths from neglect in a sinister boarding school. Her adult life was at times defined by the agony of waiting for responses to the explosive letters she sent to friends, a married man who had been her teacher, and her flirty publisher. Otherwise, most of her days were spent tending the needs of her restrictive father and a brother who drank himself to disgrace and then death.

Rather than recreate every deathbed scene and lover’s letdown, Kohler focuses on the seven years when Bronte and her remaining sisters, Emily and Anne, were writing in their father’s house, publishing their novels under pseudonyms and reacting to critics who considered their heroines “coarse.”

Kohler illuminates how Charlotte created a character who could act on the emotions she was forced to suppress. Jane says — loudly, brazenly — all the things Charlotte cannot say.

Charlotte’s imagination was the one place where she was not bound by decorum. Her unrequited love, her loneliness, the indignity of dependence, her rage at her inability to express herself openly — even to her father — all feed the story of a young governess who will not be overlooked.

“Becoming Jane Eyre,” rather than dwelling on a family’s tragedies, shows a spirit’s triumph.

A 50-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 16 years in jail for taking bribes to cover up a mine disaster in Hebei province in July 2008.

Li Junqi, former director of the Hebei bureau of Farmers’ Daily, is believed to be the first of the 10 reporters involved in the scandal to receive criminal punishment.

Thirty-four miners and a rescuer died after a blast ripped through the Lijiawa mine in Yuxian county on July 14, 2008, three weeks before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

According to local media reports, mine bosses relocated bodies, destroyed evidence and paid the journalists 2.6 million yuan ($380,000) to cover up the disaster, keeping the tragedy from appearing in newspapers for 85 days.

Following a State Council probe into the accident, the 10 journalists confessed to taking bribes, resulting in the prosecution of 48 local officials.

The identities of the 10 journalists have not been made public, but reports claim Guan Jian, a Beijing journalist from China Internet Weekly, and Li were among them.

Li was jailed 10 years for taking bribes. He was slapped with a six-year term for corruption on Oct 23 last year by the Chicheng court in Hebei. The Intermediate People’s Court of Zhangjiakou upheld the verdict on Dec 31, Li’s lawyer Zhou Ze told China Daily yesterday.

According to the verdict, after the mining accident, Li went to Yuxian county to acquire information and asked the local government for a 200,000-yuan “subscription fee” for not reporting the accident.

Li received the money on Aug 23, 2008, and handed over the cash to the cashier of Farmers’ Daily in the name of a propaganda fee on Aug 26, the verdict said, adding that the money was not recorded in the newspaper’s account and Li had the freedom to use the money.

Investigations further revealed that from October 2006 to May 2008, Li received nearly 100,000 yuan from the newspaper illegally, the evidence of which was produced to convict him on charges of corruption.

Li’s wife Lu Jianping and his lawyer Zhou said they will file an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme People’s Court soon.

Zhou maintained his client did not take bribes.

“The Yuxian government paid him the money as subscription fees and my client had no reason to refuse. We cannot conclude that Li took bribes … too many factors can go into a newspaper’s final decision,” he said.

Zhou said the reporter did not have the authority to decide whether or not to report an incident. “Li was the chief of the Hebei bureau and his major duty was to increase local subscriptions and attract advertisements.”

Li’s wife said if her husband wanted to take bribes he could have easily made more through advertisement money.

The incident is believed to be the latest in a series of journalistic scandals in China.

Last year, two journalists and 26 people posing as journalists were accused of accepting bribes to cover up a mine accident, in which a worker was killed, in Shanxi province.

Xia Xueluan, a professor of sociology at Peking University, suggested the establishment of an independent supervision administration for the media to prevent such scandals.