Of White Tea and Wuhuang
This year in Britain, summer arrived with a fiery flourish, got chased away by the rain and is now hiding, hesitant to emerge again. A great way to enhance the vibe of this lovely season amidst intermittently grey skies, gusts of wind and rain, is to drink white tea.
Posted in Culture and tagged cats, china, Chinese, comic, culture, feline, illustrator, manhua, review, tea, white tea
Raiding China’s Tomb Adventures
Our penultimate post is about popular Chinese fiction of the ghostly, grave-robbing kind. We are thrilled to post this piece by writer and translator Xueting Christine Ni, who is currently working with the fantasy and science fiction author Tang Fei, and writing a book on Chinese deities. Having studied English literature in London, and Chinese literature in Beijing, she is now based mainly in the UK.
As a writer on Chinese culture, specialising in pop culture, I’m often asked about genre fiction. “Do the Chinese do science fiction?” or “Does China have Horror?” Over the last two decades or so, Chinese pop culture has grown exponentially. Economic growth and relative political stability have allowed writers and artists the space to let their imagination run free and to create in readers a taste for such entertainment and variety.
Posted in Culture and tagged books, china, Chinese, comic, culture, film, ghost story, horror, literature, novel, tomb raiding, translation
White Crane: the Legacy of Fang Chi
I’m often quite traditional in my information gathering, usually finding out about books through printed reviews, or more often just wandering round book shops, but I discovered White Crane through their twitter account. I’m quite new to comics, having had an upbringing that didn’t really have space for comics beyond the type of kids books brought from corner news agents (Lian Huan Hua). However, they are an important part of popular culture, and when I saw this title, a Kung Fu inspired comic in English, the amalgamation of traditional and pop culture, Eastern subject for Western readers, it really struck a chord with me.
Posted in Commentary and tagged china, Chinese, comic, culture, Daredevil, DC, graphic novel, kung fu, martial arts, Marvel, Scifi, Shaolin, The Sandman, white crane, wing chun, yong chun