May 2012

Shot by photographer Jake Stengel against the backdrop of San Francisco’s famous Chinatown, Hou Hanru discusses the artists and themes guiding China’s contemporary art boom. The largest manifestation of Chinese visual culture outside of Asia, San Francisco’s Chinatown is a perfect example of the curator’s concept of “super reality”—the difference between reality as we experience it and as it is represented—and the globalized hybrid-world that inspires his socially progressive approach. The leading authority on Chinese contemporary art, Hou was one of the earliest curators to tackle the ideas of diaspora, globalization and nomadism central to the 21st-century environment of art fairs, biennials and multinational galleries.

There’s a map of China in the Sackler lobby. It won’t strike you as a map if you look at it. It’s a structure made of big, dark, wooden beams pinned together with smaller wooden posts, looping around a central area at improbable, disjointed angles, like something a giant child might build with a set of Tinkertoys.</p.

China's biggest English-language newspaper is to publish a weekly African edition with bureaux in at least two countries on the continent. The African operation of the state-run China Daily will generate a range of Africa-specific content.

The United States consulate in Shanghai has begun issuing its own pollution statistics, giving a much more pessimistic assessment of the city's air quality than official Chinese data.