News on Entertainment & Culture in China

Round the clock
Tang Dynasty take on Kiefer Sutherland TV thriller proves massive hit
Jul 19, 2019 (WiC 460)

In the TV series 24, Kiefer Sutherland plays agent Jack Bauer who, season after season, races against the clock to protect the American people against terrorists. The first season, which came out in 2001, was packed full of action, ...

High school lows
A TV drama about Chinese students studying in the US gets mixed response
Jul 12, 2019 (WiC 459)

A survey published in 2013 by Yale researchers found that 45% of Chinese students in the US reported symptoms of depression on campus, and 29% were suffering from anxiety. The rates were startling, compared with the roughly 13% reporting ...

Getting more animated
What does a hit Japanese anime say about improving ties with Tokyo?
Jul 5, 2019 (WiC 458)

After Miyazaki Hayao released Spirited Away back in 2001, the film went on to win an Academy Award for best animated film. Miyazaki later admitted to being “constantly baffled by the popularity of my work in America”. Spirited ...

Missing in action
Why Huayi Brothers’ hugely anticipated war movie got pulled
Jun 21, 2019 (WiC 457)

The Shanghai International Film Festival is the most prominent event of its kind in China. A-list celebrities tread the red carpet to celebrate the opening of the week-long festival every year. Amanda Seyfried added some Hollywood star power to ...

Sold out at 3am
Romance film becomes surprise hit – but was it through box office guile?
Jun 14, 2019 (WiC 456)

For some 2,000 years, Chinese people have marked the Duanwu Festival by eating sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves – called zongzi – and racing dragon boats to commemorate the death of Qu Yuan, a politician and poet in the ...

Buying second-hand
Alibaba’s Idle Fish platform is proving popular with celebrity sellers
Jun 7, 2019 (WiC 455)

Most celebrities do not want to be photographed in the same outfits twice and so they regularly sell their cast-off clothes. In fact, before Kim Kardashian found fantastic fame and fortune on reality TV, auctioning off her clothes and shoes on ...

Trade war TV
Korean war movies ‘in’ – Game of Thrones and a US college drama ‘out’
May 24, 2019 (WiC 453)

The world watched with baited-breath this week as an eight-year odyssey drew to a close and it finally became clear who had won the Iron Throne of Westeros. Well, that is, the world apart from China. There, fans of Game of Thrones ...

Wooed by Westeros
Final season of Game of Thrones gets massive audience on Tencent Video
May 10, 2019 (WiC 451)

Game of Thrones has won many accolades, including more Emmys than any other drama (it has received 47) and the title of most-watched show in HBO history (more than 30 million viewers an episode). Interest in the series has been ...

Heroic figures at box office
Huge opening weekend for Marvel blockbuster indicates record haul
May 3, 2019 (WiC 450)

Die-hard Marvel fan Xiaoli had waited anxiously for the release of Avengers: Endgame, the final film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s current series. So on April 23, the day the blockbuster came out in China, the 21 year-old Hangzhou ...

The write stuff
New hit show aims to improve the quality of Chinese songwriting
Apr 26, 2019 (WiC 449)

How much do songwriters get paid? In an era when music is primarily consumed online, just a sliver of streaming revenue is earmarked for songwriting royalties. Worse, most pop songs these days involve small gangs of writers, further eroding ...

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