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In “Chinglish”, a new Broadway play by David Henry Hwang, an American businessman goes to China to rustle up business for his family's ailing sign-making company. The title of the play refers to those famously kooky translations found in China, where a mundane phrase in English such as "Please keep off the grass" is translated into "I like your smile, but unlike you put your shoes on my face."

Set in Guiyang, a “small” city of 4.3m in south-west China, Mr Hwang’s shrewdly funny play, directed by Leigh Silverman, is performed in English and Mandarin with English supertitles, and features plenty of faux pas and intrigue. But what is surprising is just how well Mr Hwang, a Chinese-American playwright, manages to capture the nuances of rapidly changing China and a shifting global order. He also conveys the skewed expectations that Westerners and Chinese have of each other—and themselves. 

Now 54, Mr Hwang pioneered plays with Asian and Asian-American themes in the 1980s. Since then he has worked on a variety of projects, including co-writing the libretto for Elton John’s Broadway musical “Aida”. He is best known for his 1988 play “M. Butterfly”, about a French diplomat who has a 20-year affair with a Chinese singer who turns out to be a man, which won a Tony award and was a Pulitzer-prize finalist. At the time Mr Hwang’s plays were, as he recalls, “exotic ethnic theatre”. But now that China plays a bigger role on the world stage, the country is becoming more visible on a theatrical one.  read more »

Somewhere in Tom Scocca’s new book, "Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future", the author finds himself touring the city’s glittering jewel: the Bird’s Nest stadium, built for the Olympics in 2008. As he walks the grounds he sees an exposed portion of pillar; he runs his finger across it and discovers some concrete dust. But weren’t stadium’s tresses made of steel? During his time in Beijing—the years leading up to the Games—Scocca is never quite sure if he is seeing the curtain or peering behind it.

Scocca is a journalist­­—known to most as a Slate blogger and former New York Observer columnist—who travelled between America and China for the better part of a decade. He observed the capital city ratchet up huge changes—cosmetic and social—to become an international civic showcase. His book on the subject is funny, strange and sharply reported. More Intelligent Life spoke to Scocca about the book and what he thought the Olympics accomplished for Beijing.

How did you come to write "Beijing Welcomes You"?

My wife was living in Beijing and I was in New York, and one of us was going to end up in the same city as the other. The more I was going back and forth to Beijing the more it seemed to me that it was a great place to be a reporter. There was this amazing story unfolding in the way that the city was transforming. As someone who wasn’t a China specialist, it made me a better audience. It was sort of aimed at me, especially as a member of the foreign press.

Was censorship an issue?  read more »

With the mercy of a twitchy Pharaoh anticipating a few more plagues, China's authorities have released Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist and dissident, "on bail". As our Beijing correspondent writes in the Banyan blog:

Chinese authorities have given a rare hint of softening in the case of one prominent activist, Ai Weiwei. Late at night on June 22nd, looking a little thinner after nearly three months in detention, the bearded and still portly artist returned home. Mr Ai’s freedom, however, is unlikely to mean any let-up in China’s wider efforts to silence critics.

This is good news for Mr Ai and his wife, though it creates an uncertain precedent for other dissidents in the country. Our Beijing correspondent suggests the release may have something to do with Mr Ai's national influence—as the son of an important Communisty poet—and with the fact that China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, has some international meetings planned for later this week.  read more »

When communist China celebrated its 60th anniversary on October 1st, its national identity seemed, more than ever, refreshingly vulnerable to change. The internet has challenged the government's control of information. Consumer culture, fuelled by the ideals of Western capitalism, has become the lifestyle of choice. And as contemporary Chinese youth embrace unprecedented levels of independence and cultural self-consciousness, another Western invention—rebellious rock 'n' roll and gritty punk music—has emerged as a rising form of creative expression.

Just as the 100 Club and CBGB fostered punk movements in London and New York City, Beijing's D-22 nightclub serves as the epicentre for its burgeoning alternative music scene. Michael Pettis, a Peking University professor who was once a fixture in New York's East Village, founded the dive bar three years ago. Though the idea of an "underground scene" is often associated with punk, D-22's small stage hosts a variety of acts, from glam rock to experimental electronic, classic rock 'n' roll and Mongolian folk music. Many bands have hard-rocking frontwomen in the vein of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; some sing in both Chinese and English. All eschew the country's mainstream affection for saccharine pop.  read more »

Today's arts news and gossip 

CAMERON MACKINTOSH, known for producing popular musicals such as "Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera", has signed an agreement with the China Arts and Entertainment Group to bring Broadway musicals to China. These won't be the first musicals in China, but they will be the first to offer a wide range of ticket prices, making the shows more accessible and more profitable. "Les Miserables" will premier at the National Grand Theatre in Beijing in the fall of 2008, followed by "Mamma Mia".

An auction of the art collection of Mstislav Rostropovich, a Russia musician, was cancelled because Alisher Usmanov, a Russian oligarch, bought everything for over £25m. Mr Usmanov plans to return the pieces to Russia and to reimburse Sotheby's for the price of the auction's preparation. Rostropovich, who died earlier this year, owned quite a few national treasures, including "The Face of Russia", one of seven paintings by Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev, and some glass owned by Catherine the Great.

To a crowd of 4,000 fans in Baltimore this weekend, Stevie Wonder gave a soulful, inspired performance of old classics ("My Cherie Amour") and more recent hits ("So What the Fuss"). With piano-top dancing, bongo-drumming and raspy vocals, Mr Wonder, concluding his first tour in ten years, is as good at 57 as ever.

The New York Times will discontinue its TimesSelect service, which charges subscribers for access to columns by the likes of Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd, and open all its web content to readers as of Tuesday night. After two years of TimesSelect, the newspaper has concluded that advertisements, which increase with higher traffic, generate more revenue than subscription fees. Readers will gain access to the archives until 1987, and stories written before 1923.