By Isabella Tianzi Cai Shut out of school, migrant children study on the street in Cui Zi'en's "We Are the... of Communism" Recently, both The New York Times and The Economist reported on the sudden closing down of dozens of unlicensed schools for migrant children on safety grounds in Beijing. This round of forced closures has been the largest in scale since a similar campaign to demolish migrants’ schools in Beijing in 2006, which was regarded and criticized for making way f

By Ariella Tai CNEX, producers of the award-winning 1428, has announced their latest call for entries. This year’s theme is entitled “Educate? Educate!” They ask “Before the unpredictable 2012 arrives, CNEX wants to assemble the best and brightest works about education. Since education is not only the answer to but also the root of all questions.” Selected topics will receive grant funding from CNEX, and those with international appeal may be chosen to participate in CNEX’s

We Are the... of Communism (dir. Cui Zi'en) By Ariella Tai Earlier this month a study conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, showed Shanghai students placing first in the world, far outscoring the United States. The New York Times article reporting on these “surprising” test scores posits that a stronger “culture of education” is responsible for the stellar performance of Shanghai 15 year-olds, as well as raising anxieties that students in th

What follows is by no means a definitive or comprehensive reading list for Chinese cinema, but rather a starting point upon which hopefully others (such as you, dear reader) are welcome to build. The idea for this post was inspired by a couple of lists that I’ve come across recently, which I’d like to share – and again, I hope this prompts others to chime in as well with their recommended titles. First is a list of titles from film critic Richard Brody, which he posted on th