For most of my childhood I remained blissfully oblivious to any notion of beauty standards. In primary school, I was always the ‘tomboy’ – someone who shunned the school dress for pants and a long sleeved polo and who spent lunchtimes playing rugby and soccer. Yet this wasn’t just a phase that characterised my pre-adolescent…
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Traditionally when a person dies in China, yellow or gold joss papers are burned to ensure the deceased’s safe passage into the nether world. Thirteen-year-old Chen Mu is studying in America when his mother dies in 1875, and cannot return home to perform the rite. Instead, he swaps his mourning clothes for American suits and…
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This labor day long weekend I decided to soak up the sun, catch up on my reading, and visit the White Rabbit Gallery in Chippendale, Sydney, to see it’s newest exhibition, Serve the People, curated by Edmund Capon, former Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The White Rabbit Gallery is host…
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It would be easy to assume that the bulk of prospective candidates put forward for romance at the Shanghai Marriage Market are men. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, by 2020, there will be 24 million more Chinese men between the ages of 20 and 44 than women. But in fact it is the…
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‘A modern masterpiece’ is how Victorian Opera describes its new production of Nixon in China. After seeing the production, which showed at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, I can say that the description is spot on. In this exciting adaptation of John Adams’s classic 1987 opera, Victorian Opera brings to life a heroic story that…
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