Baishi Street

Visiting My Grandparent's Village | China Travel Vlog

In this final episode of my Asia travel series, I visit Baishi Street in Qi'ao, Zhuhai. The area is now a tourist attraction for its famous history. I also went motorboating and jet skiing in the Xijiang River. Also go to visit Macau and Hong Kong for some food adventures.

The last snow in 2018, aerial photography China Xiangtan Lake

The Works：HKBU AVA 10th anniversay exhibition, artist Carlos García de la Nuez's Cardinals & in ou

Hong Kong has its fair share of creative talents despite not being known for valuing art education highly, but the emphasis has increased over the past decade or so. That’s partly due to factors such as the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District, an increased Hong Kong and China interest in the art market, and the introduction of more international art fairs to the SAR. One institution that’s been doing its part in boosting artistic creativity is the Academy of Visual Arts of Hong Kong Baptist University, which is, this year, celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Cuban art has long been a mélange of cultural influences from Africa, North and South America and Europe, as well as an outpouring of the history, culture, and creativity of its own people. Given the country’s political and social past it’s hardly surprising that political and radical concerns have underpinned much of the country’s creativity. Carlos García de la Nuez was born in Havana in 1959 but now lives in Mexico. He belongs to a generation and group of artists that is interested in examining aesthetic developments outside of their country, downplaying the poltics, and focusing on “art for art’s sake. De La Nuez ‘s works use colour, texture and scale to explore ideas of abstraction and semiotics. You can see what that means in his one man show “Cardinals” at Sin Sin Fine Art till 11th November.

Jazz may have started in African American communities in New Orleans, and come out of a very particular set of circumstances, but since then it’s taken root all over the world. These days, you’re as likely to find great jazz music and musicians from Scandinavia or Switzerland. And it’s no coincidence I mention Switzerland as with me in the studio are the Swiss jazz trio Vein, brothers Michael and Florian Arbenz on the drums and piano, and bassist Thomas Lahns.

Don Hong-Oai - Chinese photographic artist ( 1929 to 2004 )

Don Hong-Oai

Don was born in Canton, China in 1929 and spent most of his life in Vietnam. As a young boy in Saigon he apprenticed at a photography studio. When he was not at the studio, he traveled and took photographs of the landscape. He stayed in Vietnam through the war, but fled by boat to California in 1979. He lived in San Francisco's Chinatown where he had a small darkroom to create his photographs. While living the US he returned to China every few years to make new negatives. Only in the last few years of his life was his work discovered by a wider public, and he was kept very busy making prints for collectors across the US and elsewhere. Don died in June 2004.

The photographs of Don Hong-Oai are made in a unique style of photography, which can be considered Asian pictorialism. This method of adapting a Western art for Eastern purposes probably originated in the 1940s in Hong Kong. One of its best known practitioners was the great master Long Chin-San (who died in the 1990s at the age of 104) with whom Don Hong-Oai studied. With the delicate beauty and traditional motifs of Chinese painting (birds, boats, mountains, etc.) in mind, photographers of this school used more than one negative to create a beautiful picture, often using visual allegories. Realism was not a goal.

Don Hong-Oai was one of the last photographers to work in this manner. He is also arguably the best. He has won hundreds of awards given by photography societies throughout Asia and by international juries of Kodak and Nikon.

Ningbo Railway Station