Francesca Leiper

It is not an exaggeration to say that everyone who learns Chinese calligraphy will at some point come across Wang Xizhi, China’s most celebrated historical calligrapher. Fewer perhaps know that his iconic work, the Lantingxu, was written while under...

The Longxia (or crayfish) Festival held in Nanjing in June had nothing to do with those blighted crustaceans that hang onto life as they await their garlic-heavy fate. In fact, this small scale festival of performance art packed a...

If there is one nation of people who can spectacularly whip up magnificence out of mess, carnival out of chaos, all in a teeth-clenching, last-minute manner, then you have to give it to the Chinese. As a proponent of...

Smoking, to the women of 1920s and 30s Shanghai, was terribly classy. It was the epitome of “modeng” (摩登), a transliteration of the English “modern”, which nodded to a radically transformed urban lifestyle amidst a wave of new found...

Let me guess you’ve heard once or twice that the colour red in China is a symbol of happiness and good luck. Red packets stuffed with red banknotes shower China’s crimson clad brides as firecrackers ping and pop into...

On the top floor of the flashy Deji Plaza is a recently opened art museum which is showing an exhibition of the “Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou”, a group of artists who flocked to Yangzhou in the 18th century to...

Scavenging around Nanjing is not unusual in my hunt for contemporary art in this city, but finding something really worthwhile is. From January until March, G.Art has put on a small show that, while perhaps nothing ground breaking for China,...

From his chilly studio in Beijing, Li Hongbo stretches the possibilities of China’s most celebrated invention and art’s most humble material; paper. His sculptures, which at first appear like European marble busts, are composed of several...