Meet China's First Global Pop Star

(NEWSER) - Ai Weiwei, China's leading artist and a prominent critic of the country's government, said yesterday he was beaten and detained when he tried to testify at a civil rights advocate's trial. Ai told the New York Times that dozens of police officers barged into his hotel room in Chengdu, the capital of earthquake-rocked Sichuan province. The artist, famous for his design of the Bird's Nest stadium has been leading efforts to account for the deaths of children in last year's quake. More»

Police stake out whistleblower's studio, shut down blog

(NEWSER) - The Chinese artist who has made investigating the deaths of children in the Sichuan earthquake a personal crusade is facing a government crackdown, reports the CBC. Ai Weiwei's widely read blog has been deleted, and plainclothes police officers are staking out his studio in Beijing. Ai has relaunched his blog on an American server but said, "I don't know how long it will last before it is blocked." More»

Classical superstar Xian Zhang is young, energetic—and a woman

(NEWSER) - In the traditional world of classical music, no area has been less hospitable to women than the conductor’s platform. So it’s remarkable that one of the world’s hottest maestros is not just a woman, but a 35-year-old from China—Xian Zhang, associate conductor at the New York Philharmonic. “Having an unusual background means you view tradition in a totally different way,” Zhang tells the New Statesman. More»

Contract negotiations between firms stall

(NEWSER) - Warner Music ordered YouTube to remove all music videos by Warner artists today after talks to renew their licensing deal stalled, Reuters reports. The impasse could affect hundreds of thousands of video clips. The music group, home to artists such as Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is demanding a larger cut of revenues, though no details were made public. More»

(NEWSER) - These days China feels "both older and newer than any place on the planet," writes New York Times art critic Holland Cotter. And nowhere is that tension more palpable than in the country's museums, which use antiquities from the millennia-old civilization in service of a rising world power. In a trip across China, the critic discovers a different approach to museum display. More»