A new London exhibit of Chinese contemporary art inspires some pithy analysis, plus an interview with the curator Charles Saatchi:

As you go round the show you keep encountering Chairman Mao, popping up everywhere like a proprietorial logo on a range of national goods. Zhang Hongtu shows the chairman taking the place of the kindly Quaker on a tin of porridge oats. Shi Xinning has Mao joining Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the infamous Yalta conference that carved up the postwar world and which, of course, Mao did not actually attend. Qiu Jie paints a giant pussy cat buttoned up in a Chairman Mao suit apparently to illustrate a simple Chinese pun: mao in Chinese means cat.

What is being reflected here is not only Mao’s continuing embedment in the Chinese consciousness, but also his iconic visual presence. Long before Warhol turned the chairman into one of pop art’s most striking faces, Mao himself had reduced his own image to a set of catchy visual clichés. I can certainly see why mocking him has become the default mode of Chinese art, and why Chinese collectors so enjoy owning these naughty counters to the Cultural revolution. It’s like teasing the gorilla in a zoo…

The Saatchi Gallery’s exhibit on Chinese contemporary art, with previews of every artist’s work:

Zhang Hontu grew up through both the Chinese Civil War and the ensuing Cultural Revolution before immigrating to New York in 1982. Zhang’s Long Live Chairman Mao Series #29 portrays a humorously critical blend of these ‘diametric’ cultures, transplanting the omni-present image of Zedong from his childhood into a parody western logo. Mao’s apparition on a box of Quaker Oats - all-American emblem of wholesome goodness - is nothing short of miraculous: The image is actually the real label, altered ever so slightly…

Joshua Hammer reviews Ian Buruma’s book, “The China Lover”:

In Japanese-occupied Manchuria in the 1930s, a teenage singer and actress named Yoshiko Yamaguchi rose to stardom in a series of propaganda films intended to celebrate Japan’s noble role in China. Acting under the pseudonym Ri Koran, Yamaguchi created a sensation in erotic melodramas like “China Nights,” about a love affair between a Chinese peasant girl and a heroic Japanese ship captain in wartime Shanghai. Yamaguchi’s career as a tool of the militarists continued until Japan’s surrender in 1945, when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces charged her with collaboration. (She was spared execution when she was able to prove her ethnic Japanese origins, which her bosses had kept secret.) Yamaguchi rebuilt her career from the war’s ashes, first as the star of pro-American films in occupied Japan, then as the Hollywood actress Shirley Yamaguchi, her new name inspired by Shirley Temple. Retiring from the movies in the late 1950s, Yamaguchi continued to reinvent herself, as a diplomat’s wife, as a journalist and as a prominent politician in the Japanese Parliament…

“BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have detained six people suspected of producing and selling melamine, the chemical at the center of the country’s scandal over tainted dairy products, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The arrests were made in Hohhot, capital of the northern region of Inner Mongolia, which is China’s main dairy-producing area, Xinhua said in an overnight report, citing the municipal government. …

The arrests follow the detention last week of 22 people in Hebei province suspected of being involved in a network there for producing melamine and selling it on to milk farms and purchasing stations.”

“BEIJING (Reuters) - A strong earthquake hit China’s remote northwestern region of Xinjiang early on Monday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties, state media said.

The quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) put at magnitude 5.7, happened at about midnight local time near China’s western border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan…”

Wuhan zookeepers give chicken soup to stressed out pandas:

“BEIJING (AP) — Everyone needs some chicken soup for the soul — even pandas.

The Wuhan Zoo in central China has been feeding its two pandas home-cooked chicken soup twice in a month to reduce stress and give them a nutritional boost, a zoo official said Friday.

He Zhihua said 3-year-old Xiwang and Weiwei — literally meaning “Hope” and “Greatness” — were tired and suffering from a little shock since the start Monday of the weeklong National Day holiday, one of the biggest travel seasons of the year.

On Wednesday, up to 30,000 people swarmed the zoo and about 1,000 tourists packed the panda enclosure, shouting to get the animals’ attention, He said. The pandas paced restlessly…”