The first book to explore the life and times of Chinese artist, businesswoman, socialite and style expert ‘Madame Song’, whose life was spent in the company of a Who’s Who of Cold War China and which paralleled the highs and lows of the country’s history. The extraordinary life story of Song Huai-Kuei, better known as Madame Song, follows the arc of 20th-century history. Artist, entrepreneur and impresario, Song broke cultural barriers for love, transcended Cold War borders for her art, and laid the foundations for a global fashion industry. With her cosmopolitan outlook, she defined an influential vision for Chinese culture on the world stage and asserted an Asian perspective in 21st-century art and design. Madame Song is a name that everyone interested in the roots of contemporary visual culture needs to know. At the heart of this volume is a critical biography that explores Song’s youth in revolutionary China, her cross-cultural marriage to Bulgarian fibre artist Maryn Varbanov, her success within avant-garde circles in Eastern and Western Europe during the Cold War, and finally her efforts within China to revive traditional aesthetics in tandem with the explosive rise of global couture. Throughout her life, she cultivated an aspirational image of what a modern Chinese woman could be within a changing and opening world. A consummate networker, Song built bridges between people, disciplines and business interests, often in the elegant surroundings of Maxim’s de Paris, Beijing, the restaurant she famously helped to open. In tracking the highs and lows of the massive social changes that occurred throughout her lifetime, Madame Song’s exceptional life serves as a fascinating lens through which to view 20th-century China.

Central to the stories of many of the world's great art galleries are the acquisitions and bequests that shaped their collections. So it is with M+ - a new museum of visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong - and the M+ Sigg Collection. Acquired by the museum in 2012 from the Swiss businessman, diplomat and art collector Uli Sigg, the collection consists of 1,510 works of contemporary Chinese art, dating from the 1970s to the present and ranging across all media. Most significantly, perhaps, it offers a unique window on the remarkable flowering of experimental artistic practices in China during this time - a period of unprecedented social and economic change in the country that saw artists devise new, sometimes radical, approaches to artmaking, formulating new connections between art and society, and developing ground-breaking conceptual methodologies. Published to coincide with the presentation of the M+ Sigg Collection at the opening of the M+ building, Chinese Art Since 1970 features more than 600 works by more than 300 artists represented by the collection, among them Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei and Geng Jianyi. After introductory essays by Pi Li and Uli Sigg, an illustrated chronology spanning the years 1972 to 2020 highlights important social events, exhibitions and artistic movements to establish a context for the discussion of the featured artists and their work that follows. Punctuating this discussion are contributions from renowned art historians, curators and critics from across the globe on specific works and practices, together with in-depth explanations of key concepts and events, from Cynical Realism to the seminal exhibition China/Avant-Garde. Through the medium of the world's pre-eminent collection of contemporary Chinese art, Chinese Art Since 1970 offers an unparalleled introduction to one of the most culturally dynamic periods in modern Chinese history. With over 700 illustrations

Considered the first Chinese artist to work in video, Zhang Peili (b. 1957) manipulates perspective, close-ups, and framing to create astonishing recordings of banal repeated actions, such as breaking glass, reading, washing, shaving, and blowing bubble gum. He is a pioneering figure, experimenting with a video camera in the late 1980s, exploring digital formats in the early 2000s, and developing large-scale, immersive scenes today. Despite Zhang's pivotal role in the global history of video art, his oeuvre has received relatively little attention. This book, which includes insightful essays, color plates, and an illustrated chronology, is one of the few in-depth explorations in English of this important artist's work. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: The Art Institute of Chicago (03/31/17-07/09/17)

"Bio-inspired Computation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" focuses on the aspects of path planning, formation control, heterogeneous cooperative control and vision-based surveillance and navigation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from the perspective of bio-inspired computation. It helps readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of control-related problems in UAVs, presenting the latest advances in bio-inspired computation.

By combining bio-inspired computation and UAV control problems, key questions are explored in depth, and each piece is content-rich while remaining accessible. With abundant illustrations of simulation work, this book links theory, algorithms and implementation procedures, demonstrating the simulation results with graphics that are intuitive without sacrificing academic rigor. Further, it pays due attention to both the conceptual framework and the implementation procedures.

The book offers a valuable resource for scientists, researchers and graduate students in the field of Control, Aerospace Technology and Astronautics, especially those interested in artificial intelligence and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Professor Haibin Duan and Dr. Pei Li, both work at Beihang University (formerly Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, BUAA). Prof Duan's academic website is: http: //hbduan.buaa.edu.cn

During China's War of Resistance Against Japan (1917-1941), the Japanese invaders in 1942 launched barbarous "mopping-up" campaigns against the Communist-led base areas in central Hopei Province. But the people there, every man, woman and child, inspired by Chairman Mao's thinking on people's war, joined in the war effort, closely co-ordinating with the Eighth Route Army units to develop guerrilla warfare over a large area, and creating the "tunnel warfare" that has become so well known. Making good use of tunnels, the army and people fought the Japanese aggressors and their local puppets, using various stratagems to wipe out the enemy's effectives. From an inferior force they grew into a strong one, going from the defensive over to the offensive at a time when the enemy was strong and we were weak. In the end the enemy "mopping-up" campaigns were smashed and the aggressors suffered decisive defeats.

"Sculptuur Studies" is a publication from the Sculpture Institute, the research centre for modern and contemporary international sculpture affiliated to the Beelden aan Zee Museum, Scheveningen. In this edition the focus is on contemporary Chinese sculpture, art politics in Switzerland and the designer Benno Premsela. A portrait has been written of the latter to mark the fact that a bust of the designer was given to the Beeldon aan Zee Museum for its collection. An extensive account about Rembrandt, written by Piet Esser, is included in this second volume of "Sculptuur Studies" as a source publication, while Arie Hartog, curator of the Gerhard Marckshaus in Bremen, contributes an essay on the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck. The regular columns include the following topics: international sculpture diary, obituaries for Geurt Brinkgreve, Theo Scholten, Rudi Oxenaar and Ellen Joosten, plus an extensive list of acquisitions and publications from the Beelden aan Zee Museum and Sculpture Institute. Sculpture lovers can indulge themselves in this comprehensive and informative periodical. The text is in English and Dutch.

"Zhiqing: Stories from China's Special Generation" presents the recollections of fourteen men and women who were "sent down" to the countryside during China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Teenagers or young adults at the time, the authors left school to heed Mao's call for China's "educated youth" (zhiqing) to go to the poorest provinces and distant borders, where they worked with the local people in villages or on military farms and construction teams. From the Great Northern Wilderness to Hainan Island, their true-to-life stories illustrate the harsh realities of rural existence and Cultural Revolution politics while focusing on personal joys and miseries. While not meant as a political statement, these stories serve as a powerful testimony to the experience of an entire Chinese generation.
"It was my distinct pleasure to have served as in-house editor of Kang Xuepei's "In the Countryside," which was initially her masters of arts thesis at SHSU. It was hard to imagine the horrors that these Chinese youth had to go through during that period of Mao's experiment in social engineering and more amazing to realize that most of them came through it all without intense bitterness toward those who thrust them into such perilous and uncomfortable circumstances. In this book you will find a sampling of the experiences of "zhiqing" from many perspectives written in strikingly fine prose."--Paul Ruffin, director, Texas Review Press

Through a series of research reports, this book discusses the operational status of Chinese enterprises with foreign investment. Since China's period of economic Reform and Opening-Up the country has experienced more than thirty years of development, with hundreds of thousands of foreign-invested enterprises being established in various parts of the country. Their operational statuses are of interest not only to governments and research institutes, but also to foreign investors and enterprises. Drawing from a massive collection of published literature and statistics, this research group has collected data and information from relevant departments and local governments. Research and subsequent analyses were drawn from a wide range of resources in order to present a broad view of the basic contours shaping foreign-invested enterprises in China since the beginning of the 21st century, and particularly since the eleventh national "Five Year Construction Plan". Additionally, this research sought to explore trends in the sustainable development of China's continued utilization of foreign investment, as well as how to improve related national foreign policies.