Despite the fact that big international bands keep failing to make it here (by "big" I mean famous, not necessarily good), promoters are still trying their best to bring quality acts to Beijing. Krautrock trio The Secret Machines (see interview here) and singer-songwriter Julie Doiron (see interview here) are playing tonight at Yugong Yishan and 2 Kolegas, while Zuoxiao Zuzhou (see interview here) performs his first solo in eight years at Century Theater. On Saturday, Japanese synth punk band Triple Nipples drive into 2 Kolegas for a night of god-know-what-would-happen. On other sides of the town, French folk duo Vialka and world music group Dawanggang jam at Tiny Salt Coffee Club, whereas Low Wormwood frontman Liu Kun releases his solo debut at D-22 with supports from some of Beijing's best folk musicians. Heavy weekend for live music, so take out your wallet now, you know musicians need money more than faith to keep rocking. 

Not to get Nietzschean on everyone, but life is a series of senseless motions, random happenstances and chance encounters, requiring someone special to parse into moments that matter and those that don’t. That’s the artist’s gift to us. Attending Julie Doiron’s songwriting workshop this Friday (March 19) won’t necessarily give you this power overnight, but it certainly won’t hurt.

"My brother Andrew lives in Beijing and I am excited to visit him again!"
- Brandon Curtis

Before conducting this interview with The Secret Machines (www.myspace.com/secretmachines), I went through all their albums – days later, the psychedelic thunderstorm of “First Wave Intact” and the innocent love story in “Alone, Jealous & Stoned” are still living in my head. As the band prepares to tour Beijing (Mar 19) and Shanghai (Mar 20), we talked to Brandon Curtis, vocalist/keyboardist/bassist, about the music that brought them to this point.

Following our breaking of the news that Beijing’s Show of Peace had been postponed last week, the Global Times managed to obtain some additional comment from organizer Rick Garson, published in today’s paper.

Tickets are now on sale for the Sanyuan Foods China Open 2010. That’s snooker for the uninitiated. Tickets are priced at RMB 20-2,010 and available by clicking here. To have a look at the schedules and find out when you might see Ronnie O’Sullivan click here.

There’s been more fall-out from the Winter Olympics. Gold medal winner Zhou Yang has come under fire for thanking her parents when everyone knows that you should thank your country above all. To remind her of this was State Sports General Administration deputy director Yu Zaiqing who said “Thanking your parents is not a problem, but should thank the country first. Must put the country first, don’t just thank your parents and that’s it.”

Fifty-five years ago this May, yet another aspiring painter arrived in Paris. The French capital was then the mecca for artists from around the world, but 34-year-old Chu Teh-Chun (Zhu Dequn), who is being honored by a major retrospective this month at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), had traveled particularly long and far to reach the city of his dreams. His study of art had begun almost 20 years before at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, and from the first time he looked inside a book of Western painting he knew Paris was where he wanted to be.

With the Bookworm's Literary Festival in full swing, we give the the lowdown on geek chic.

We asked notable Beijingers: "What's on your bookshelf?" Here's what Ian Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal said:

My favorite childhood book is House at Pooh Corner.

The snow on Monday, I don’t know what’s that all about, it’s March already. Don't know how it's been affecting the festival season (which is spring, in case you haven't seen it's coming), but the Beijing leg of JUE Festival is well under its way. Presented by Split Works, the festival consists of art, cinema and music events across Beijing and Shanghai (see our interview with the organizers here and full event schedule here). On Friday night, JUE sees the appearances of American indie singer/instrumentalist St. Vincent at Yugong Yishan and Danish rockabilly group Dead Elvis & His One Man Grave at D-22. On the local side, things get more hardcore at Mao Livehouse, where TOOKOO, Bigger Bang! and The Reason rock on the northern end of Nanluogu Xiang - maybe you can hear them in YGYS, since St. Vincent's music is relatively quiet, maybe.

Poetry seems daunting to many of us. Years of staring at print in classrooms made us feel that way. The answer to our struggles to love verse might be the genre of spoken word. We spoke to two of its most acclaimed exponents – British legend Benjamin Zephaniah and slam-winning Steven Connell – on the eve of their performance at 2 Kolegas this Saturday (March 13) as part of the Bookworm International Literary Festival.