A Florida artist is facing criminal charges after
deliberately dropping a vase by dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in
an apparent protest.
Maximo Caminero, 51, was charged with criminal mischief
after breaking the $1m (£600,000) vase on Sunday in Miami.
The Florida museum is holding an exhibition of the work
of the Chinese artist until mid-March. It includes an artwork,
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, depicting Mr Ai smashing an ancient
Chinese vase.
As the western world eagerly anticipates the festive season, in China Christmas will be a relatively subdued affair.
Schools and businesses will remain open and life will continue as normal for the majority of the population.
But not everyone lacks festive sprit. The BBC spoke to shoppers in Beijing, who are embracing some Christmas traditions.
Family ties are hugely
important in China, but thousands of Chinese parents are still sending
children as young as three away to boarding school. Why do they do it?
Kelly Jiang bounces into her kindergarten classroom, her parents a few steps behind.
"Bye Mum and Dad," the four-year-old trills, with barely a backwards glance.
As her parents wave farewell, she's already happily chatting to her teacher and her classmates.
In Mao’s China, pianos were destroyed
as despised symbols of the bourgeoisie – but now an estimated 40m
children are learning the instrument. What has changed? Clarissa
Sebag-Montefiore investigates.
Keng Zhou holds a prestigious position
as dean of the International Piano Academy at the Shanghai
Conservatory of Music. But he first learnt to play in 1973 not on a
gleaming grand piano but on an instrument’s battered remains. The
legs had been sawn off for fuel and its cover removed to create a
makeshift table. For years in Mao’s China, Western classical music
was viewed suspiciously as a tool of imperialism and the piano a
despised instrument of the bourgeoisie.
Tom Brook profiles a documentary in the market for distributors at Cannes that examines China’s growing interest in fine French wines.
China’s economic ascendancy has created a thirst for luxury goods – and produced a bubble in wine prices. But whereas the buyers of the most expensive wines in the West tend to be investors, the Chinese are buying them to drink.
Directors David Roach and Warwick Ross’ film Red Obsession examines the effect of China’s new wealth on the wine industry in Bordeaux, on domestic drinking habits and on China’s perception abroad.
Sweden has issued international arrest warrants for two Britons suspected of illegally importing 10m euros (£8m) worth of garlic into the EU via Norway. Why would criminals do that?
Swedish state prosecutors claim to have cracked one of Europe's more seemingly strange, if lucrative, smuggling rings.
They say two British men are believed to have made millions of euros smuggling Chinese garlic from Norway into Sweden.
USA has been forecast as the second world economy, but energy independent. A new intelligence assessment of global trends projects that China
will outstrip the United States as the leading economic power before
2030, but that America will remain an indispensable world leader,
bolstered in part by an era of energy independence.
Russia’s clout will wane, as will the economic strength of other countries reliant on oil for revenues, the assessment says.
In Hong Kong, good exam results are essential. The pressure for success has created a new generation of tutors with a rock star approach to self-promotion.They strike glamorous poses in posters in shopping malls and on the sides of buses.
But they are not movie stars or supermodels: they are Hong Kong's A-list "tutor kings" and "tutor queens", offering pupils a chance to improve mediocre grades.
In Hong Kong's consumer culture, looks sell. Celebrity tutors in their sophisticated hair-dos and designer trappings are treated like idols by their young fans who flock to their classes.
And they have earnings to match - some have become millionaires and appear regularly on television shows.
