On January 17, 2011, Hong Yuping (洪玉萍), from Fujian Province, contacted Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), about her family’s plight and requested assistance: In June 2009, their son, Yang Weixin (杨伟鑫), then age six, was abducted from their hometown, Quanzhou, and they had been searching for him ever since.1 In early 2010, Hong had recognized Yang Weixin in a photo of three children begging outside a Xiamen train statio
Zhang Huan is a very talented performance artist in China. In the famous work "Twelve Square Meters", he was covered with fish oil and honey sitting in a dirty public toilet in Beijing's East Village for an hour, not only making swarms of flies greedily surround him, but also People feel extremely uncomfortable and even nauseous.
Since 2020, university students across China have launched a grassroots initiative to combat menstrual stigma by placing “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in campus restrooms. These boxes, often accompanied by signs reading “Take one if you need it, donate if you can,” provide free sanitary pads to anyone caught off guard by their period—offering both practical relief and a symbolic challenge to the cultural silence surrounding menstruation.
“There are many problems in rural areas. For example, agriculture is declining, no one is farming, traditional things are falling apart, farmers are brainwashed by the idea of urbanization, and they don’t like their hometown. They all want to move to the city.”Activist Ou Ning said. Rural construction is an important issue. As an activist, he chose Bishan village in Anhui, China as the field to start his experiment, which is “Bishan Project”.
Xiao Lu was one of the most influential women in contemporary Chinese art, better known for provoking performance art works and sharp social commentaries. Her works address sensitive social and cultural issues that counter mainstream attitudes and values. In 1989, she put her work "Dialogue" up for exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.
Zuoxiao Zuzhou is a Chinese singer whose accented, croaky voice is hardly ever in tune. But for his fans he's the voice of a generation — one of the very few voices who dare to speak out. After a collaboration, Cowboy Junkies member Michael Timmins called him "China's Leonard Cohen."
Thousands of ethnic Mongolians have protested across northern China in opposition to Beijing plans to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in some school subjects.
A minibus is parked on the side of the road with a series of pipelines wrapped around it. One end of the pipeline is connected to the exhaust port of the minibus, and the other end is put into the car, so that the exhaust gas can be directly introduced into the car, forming a " Street gas chamber".
Chen Boer's first heroine film, which she co-wrote and directed, was "Daughter of China," about female soldiers in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. They didn't have much filmed material at the time, but as a feminist, Chen Boer clearly wanted to record the sacrifices and contributions of Chinese women in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
On November 26, 2012, about ten college students “flash mobbed” the front of the human resources and social welfare department of Hubei Province in central China. "Refuse to take off pants for inspection," "Ask about menstrual history, what does it have to do with being a civil servant." According to the current admission regulations, female candidates for civil service positions must go through a detailed gynecological examination.
Beijing-based artist Liu Yi is working on a series of black-and-white portraits he knows will never be shown in a Chinese gallery. His varied subjects — men and women, young and old, smiling and pensive — have one thing in common: They are Tibetans who have set themselves on fire to protest repressive Chinese rule.
With delicate composition, striking details and strong emotion, five editorial posters drawn by Wuheqilin have attracted some half million followers to his account on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform. His political views expressed in his art have led to some netizens dubbing him the "Wolf Worrier artist."
The immediate prototypes of Zhang Xiaogang’s Big Family series are formal group photographic portraits from the 1950’s and 60’s, including those of Zhang’s own family, a source of the painter’s “endless reveries.” From these old black-and-white pictures Zhang Xiaogang derived the series’ paradigmatic features: a subdued, nearly monochromatic palette; a thickly layered but flat surface, without overt evidence of brushwork; a general compositional restric
Female students from the Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou called for equal job opportunities and for people to "pay attention to the value of women" while protesting on the school's campus, shirtless and covered in body paint.
The photos, taken by ogling passersby, have been circulating on Weibo and naturally netizens stand divided on whether the semi-naked protests were empowering or counterproductive...
Whose Utopia? is a color film which is 19 minutes 58 seconds long. It was originally commissioned by the Siemens Arts Program back in 2005. The projector-style video is based on the work and social lives of assembly line workers at OSRAM’s light bulb factory in the Pearl River Delta in China. This area has received huge numbers of immigrants from inland provinces seeking work and better lives in the wake of Beijing’s booming economy.
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Five Chinese feminists have been arrested for planning to protest against sexual harassment. They face five to ten years in jail. This post explains the background to the case, and suggests ways that other activists around the world can show solidarity.
From October to December 2020, Chinese university students nationwide launched a viral movement to install “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in women’s restrooms—free, wall-mounted containers stocked with disposable pads on a take-one, replace-one basis. Nearly 250 campuses joined within weeks. Some sustained their boxes for over a year, while others saw them vanish after bureaucratic pushback, logistical hurdles, or dwindling volunteer resources.
Just the other day, we were hearing about Samsung getting in legal trouble over patent violations with Apple. A federal court decision ruled that Samsung owes Apple more than $1 billion in restitution.
Late last month, Chinese citizens took up a creative means of protest over the nation’s strict “zero-COVID” policy. In a place with little tolerance for large public demonstrations, protesters have been holding up blank pieces of paper. Their ingenuity inspired a local artist Yolanda He Yang to stage a public art demonstration to subtly communicate their dissent.
Gao Yaojie (Chinese: 高耀潔, Gao Yaojie; 19 December 1927 – 10 December 2023) was a Chinese gynecologist, academic, and AIDS activist based in Zhengzhou, Henan, China. Gao was honoured for her work by the United Nations and Western organizations whilst spending time under house arrest.
In 2012, the 24-year-old feminist activist Xiao Meili launched the "Beautiful Women's Rights Walk" anti-sexual assault activity. She set off from Beijing in mid-September and passed through Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Changsha and other cities along the way to reach the destination Guangzhou. She took 114 days and reaches more than 2500 kilometers in this tour.
"100 Questions About Sex from Children" is an annual touring sex education exhibition founded and curated by Se A, a leading advocate of inclusive sex education in China. Since its launch in 2021, the exhibition has been held in major cities such as Shenzhen and Guiyang, with plans to expand into regions where sex education and gender awareness remain underdeveloped.
Song Dong's Waste Not consisted of a single installation comprising over 10,000 commonplace, domestic items of daily life that had been used and amassed by the artist’s mother (Zhao Xiangyuan) over fifty years.
In early January, constructions workers in Wuhan, China staged a Gangnam Style protest in front of their employer's building. Using the Gangnam Style dance, the men sought to bring media attention to their mounting unpaid wages.
They are disparaged as “free-willed” women, “stubborn,” “picky,” “incomplete.”
But a video by an East Asian beauty brand that went viral over the past week has upended the conversation on China’s sheng nu, which translates literally into “leftover women” — those who happen to be over 27 and unmarried.
“People think that in Chinese society an unmarried woman is incomplete. You feel like an outsider,” says one young woman.