Las Vegas casinos used to feast on Asian gamblers. Often, these were the “whales” – otherwise known as high rollers – that the casinos would rely upon to rack up huge profits from their casino operations.

The popularity of casino games is huge. People love playing online and they also love the atmosphere of a casino. This has always been a hallmark of the Asian culture, and Chinese tourists were becoming a huge growth opportunity for the Vegas casinos.

But all of that is changing due to two very powerful forces. One was the financial crisis which decimated the Vegas casinos. Everyone was affected, including Chinese tourists. Now the crowds are coming back to Vegas, but there is still a problem as there are fewer Asian high rollers.

And that’s due to the second factor – the emergence of Macau in China as a gambling destination. The casinos there are bigger than those in Vegas and the gambling volume has surpassed Las Vegas. Chinese whales now can stay on their own continent and get the same kind of thrill from progressive jackpot slots or hours of blackjack. They don’t have to look to Vegas as the best option.

This trend is having a huge impact on Chinese tourism, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Is China fighting a losing battle with its ridiculous censorship crusade?

Authoritarian governments need to control information to control their population, so none of this nonsense is a surprise. Now the Chinese are extending this strategy to movies:

China has proposed a new law to ban film content which it deems to disturb social stability or promote religious fanaticism.

The Movie Industry Promotion Bill would also forbid foreign firms or individuals from filming without a government-sanctioned partner.

Correspondents say this is part of an overall tightening of China’s grip over its cultural industries.

China has long banned the screening of films deemed politically sensitive.

And some film-makers have steered clear of controversial issues likely to upset the authorities, observers say.

But this draft bill adds even more categories open to censorship. It states that films must not harm national honour and interest, incite ethnic hatred, spread “evil cults” or superstition, or propagate obscenity, gambling, drug abuse, violence or terror.

The Chinese are trying their best with this despicable strategy, but can this work in a modern world where we have social media and mobile phones? Have they seen what’s going in with the Arab Spring and now even in Russia?

For example, if people want mobile gambling apps, they are going to get them. But the same phones that permit this technology can also be used for social networking, sharing photos, videos and protest ideas.

This tight grip can’t last too long.

Actress Bai Ling arriving at the Huffington Post 100 Gamechangers event on October 18 2011 in New York City. Ling is a Chinese actress who you’ve seen in films such as The Crow. She also had a cool role in Entourage.

This performance was shortened to just one hour and forty minutes, and was directed by Li Liuyi, choreographed by Fei Bo, and had music composed by Guo Wenjing. The original, or course, was written by the legendary Tang Xianzu in 1598, and lasted a total of 20 hours. Some audiences may have already seen the 2001, movie adaptation of this play, which was titled ‘Yóuyuán Jīngmèng’. However, whilst it might be easier to watch a movie version whilst checking emails or playing online games at the Chinese PartyPoker site, nothing quite compares to seeing pieces like this performed live. Indeed, this latest dance interpretation of The Peony Pavilion has been, for many, one of the highlights of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival.

The plot of The Peony Pavilion follows a young girl who falls asleep and dreams of a man with whom she falls in love. Upon waking, she becomes obsessed with the man from her dream, and eventually dies of a broken heart. However, the president of the underworld judges that she is destined to marry the man she has seen, and so she is brought back to life in order to do so.

Audiences are said to have been particularly impressed by the stunning aesthetics of this particular production, which feature a number of traditional costumes, and draw on other typically Chinese styles of dance. The festival celebrates a wide range of performance art, and take places in Scotland’s capital city. This year’s festival director, Jonathan Mills, had chosen to include the production as one of the many examples of how Eastern culture has come to inspire much Western art.

The photo above has Bob Dylan in at the Worker’s Gymnasium in Beijing on April 6th, but there was a ton of controversy relating to his concerts in China. Dylan recently came out with a scathing statement denying that there was any censorship of his songs or lyrics during his performances.

China has a host of demographic issues facing the country as the population gets older. However, the largest issue revolves around the fact that there are too many men in China. The one-child policy has led to far fewer females being born. This naturally leads to a host of dating issues in China that will only get worse over the years.

We might see all sorts of interesting developments as this will be country where one out of four men are single, but not by choice. It will be interesting to see if China ends up allowing more foreign brides and the impact that would have on the culture. Also, more Chinese men will end up dating younger women. But then that means even fewer women available for young men who aren’t financially secure enough to compete with the older men.

It sounds like a demographic disaster and it will be interesting to see what happens.

Fast Company has a cool profile of TV host Yang Lan. She is one of China’s biggest celebrities and she’s aiming to become a media mogul.

She has sought to turn that fame into a full-fledged business empire. Yang has created new programming for TV — including one of the first shows targeting women — and set up sites on the burgeoning Chinese-language Web. She has bought print publications; she sells credit cards; she’s even hawking a co-branded jewelry line with Celine Dion. She and her husband, Bruno Wu, are one of China’s richest couples; Forbes has estimated their wealth at about $300 million. All of which has led the foreign press — and her own handlers — to rarely miss an opportunity to call her the Oprah of China.

It’s not a fair comparison: The clapping session is an apt metaphor for the ways in which the Chinese-media marketplace — and Yang herself — is fundamentally more constrained than the American. There are the constantly changing government regulations; television, says Jeremy Goldkorn of the Beijing media blog Danwei.com, “is the most tightly controlled of all Chinese media because it remains the one truly mass media. There are a huge variety of rules and restrictions on TV content, and they change regularly.” And there is her generation’s own worldview; China’s fortysomethings entered adulthood as their nation simultaneously opened up (under Deng Xiaoping, to get rich was seen as progressively more glorious) and closed down (Tiananmen Square in 1989 imprinted on their young minds that breaking the rules was not the path to glory).

Yang Lan, 42, has done wonders to achieve what she has so far, being careful to maintain her above-the-fray image while morphing with the fast-shifting landscape. “You do what you can do,” she says with a sigh in lightly accented, fluent English. Some of her ventures have succeeded — her interview show has been one of the past decade’s megahits — while others, including her Sun TV network, have been huge flops. Through it all, she has held on to her biggest asset: her fame. Liu Yingqi, vice president of China Life Insurance Co., which sponsors New Girl in the Office, says, “She’s the audience’s Yang Lan, society’s Yang Lan.” But the same country that has embraced her and elevated her to such success has also kept her from being the woman she wants to be — Yang Lan’s Yang Lan.

Good luck to her!

]]> http://www.chinablitz.com/2010/05/13/chinese-film-premieres-at-cannes/feed/ 0 http://www.chinablitz.com/2010/05/05/tong-jian-and-pang-qing-perform-in-taipei/ http://www.chinablitz.com/2010/05/05/tong-jian-and-pang-qing-perform-in-taipei/#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 15:29:28 +0000 Staff http://www.chinablitz.com/?p=1005

Olympic silver medalists Tong Jian and Pang Qing of China perform a pairs figure skating segment during a performance at the Taipei Arena Ice Rink