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Calligraphy master learned well

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-22

SHANGHAI and its nearby provinces were the ancient birthplace of Chinese scholarly paintings and there has been a vibrancy about culture and art in the region since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). One of the most...

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Agassi's passionate anti-sport memoir

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-22

EVEN those not convinced that Andre Agassi was the best tennis player of his time will readily admit he outdid all others in attracting attention. It started in the 1980s when he was a teenage phenom from Las Vegas...

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Great narrative, rich characters

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-22

"TWISTED Tree," Kent Meyers's fictional small town, is in rodeo country, somewhere on the eastern perimeter of the Black Hills in South Dakota, where the "creased and broken" land is vast and veined by dirt roads. ...

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Delight of discovery

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-22

DID you know that Pudong can trace its history back to the year 535 when it was called Chuansha? Or that local Chinese people once called Nanjing Road "Ma Lu," meaning a horse road, because most people using it rode...

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Busy star makes time for charity

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-22

CARINA Lau, the acclaimed Hong Kong actress, visited Shanghai last weekend to attend a charity auction held by the Shanghai Soong Ching Ling Foundation. Wearing a blue-and-green qipao with peacock patterns that...

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Seal depicting legend valued for good stone

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

GENERALLY, what makes a seal valuable is the calligraphy and cutting skills of the stamp. However, a seal displayed in Shanghai Museum is highly cherished because of the relief carving on its upper body and also...

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Enchanting obsession

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

ORHAN Pamuk favors short chapters that lead the reader from one entry to the next, turning back to correct or amend. He is directorial in "The Museum of Innocence," his enchanting new novel of first love painfully...

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Back to what worked

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

WE have just lived through an age in which economists were our most influential moral philosophers. The results aren't great. "The main moral compass we now have is a thin and degraded notion of economic welfare,...

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How a city learned to eat well

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

IN 1815, Paris had 3,000 restaurants; New York had none. (In fact, the word itself wouldn't enter the American lexicon until the mid-19th century.) Those forced to eat out could choose between "a slab of beef...

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New and old, ethos and style

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

THE talent and style of old and new Shanghai comes together on Changde Road, a street famous for its Changde apartments, once the home of renowned author Eileen Chang. The Shanghainese novelist was propelled to notoriety...

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A knack for making a new home look old

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

WHEN Juliette van Gaver and her family left their former French Concession lane house to move into a new apartment, it didn't take long to turn it into a home that looked like it had been theirs for years, Yang Di...

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Forever Prince – Jeff Chang

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

THE singing heartthrob Jeff Chang is forging a new stage career, starting with a play featuring a dog's eye view of life, Elise Fu reports. In popular Chinese music circles, he has been known as the "love song...

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Magician conjures an improved image

Feature | Vibe
2009-11-1

I'VE only seen magic shows on television, never a "live" one. And if they weren't of the type done by super showman David Copperfield, they involved a white-gloved man in a top hat and tails pulling a rabbit out...

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Sun Wei's sages' work shows famous scholars

Feature | Vibe
2009-10-25

SUN Wei was a famous painter at the end of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). Living in Shu, part of today's Sichuan Province, he was considered the region's top painter and influenced many other famous artists, especially...

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Rapt fan breathless about voracious star

Feature | Vibe
2009-10-25

SHE demanded a different holder for each of the many cigarettes she smoked daily during the filming of "Cleopatra," and the holder's color couldn't clash with the cloth on any table at which she smoked. Quick to...