Chinese

CHENG SHIFA, 86 Painter, cartoonist Famed Chinese painter, cartoonist and calligrapher Cheng Shifa has died in his hometown of Shanghai, local media reported. He was 86. According to the Shanghai Daily newspaper, Mr. Cheng died Tuesday in a city hospital after an undisclosed illness. Although known early on as a cartoonist and illustrator, Mr. Cheng became best known for his traditional brush paintings of minority tribes from the southwestern province of Yunnan. Those works won artistic praise and political favor for stressing the unity of all Chinese ethnic groups.

PHILADELPHIA -- While the White House has been focusing its foreign policy attention on Iraq, the rest of the world hasn't been standing still. China has been using a new approach to expand its influence and global appeal. This approach is one at which the United States once excelled but now does badly. Call it "soft power," a term coined more than a decade ago by Harvard's Joseph Nye to describe a country's ability to lead by example and get others to follow because they admire what you are. A new book called Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World looks at Beijing's increasing skill at using diplomacy, trade incentives, cultural and educational exchanges, and other techniques to build an image of a benign global leader.

Beijing -- Earlier, whisking nearly 600 mph thousands of feet above Siberia, an airline crew member recognized the flight's most famous passenger. He pulled Cal Ripken Jr. aside, into the service area of the plane and asked for an autograph. But by the time the 13-hour flight had ended and Ripken had finally set foot on Chinese soil, he moved with ease through Beijing Capital International Airport, drawing no second looks, no autograph hounds and no curiosity. No, the Hall of Famer wasn't in Baltimore anymore.

BEIJING -- Stepping up their efforts after a slew of scandals surrounding tainted food and drugs, Chinese officials showed off seized goods yesterday to Chinese and foreign journalists and said consumers need not be wary of products made in China. They also invited reporters to a food-safety laboratory and discussed their efforts to find and test products for harmful ingredients. "Yes, we have had some problems with the food safety of Chinese products. However, they are not that serious," said Li Dongsheng, vice minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

The U.S. is outsourcing its food supply. Imports have nearly doubled since 2001, and the big growth is not in foods that don't grow here - coffee, for instance, or bananas - but in crops that are American staples. The change raises questions about food safety, and about the wisdom of entrusting the nation's food security to overseas producers. Consider garlic. The U.S. is one of the world's major garlic growers. It is also an important exporter of garlic. Yet American imports of garlic have been skyrocketing.

AS the United States enters its second of two days of human rights talks with Chinese officials today, it is hard to fathom what frightens the old men who rule China.It ought to be the specter of depression, which the leaders have fought off with Keynesian methods their economy may not afford much longer, or anarchy at China's borders from breakdown in Russia, mad rulers in North Korea and nuclear rivalry gripping India and Pakistan.What really makes President Jiang Zemin and his colleagues nervous, however, is political dissent.

BEIJING -- The high-stakes trade negotiations here pulled out of a steep dip yesterday, as the U.S. team once again canceled its departure and resumed talks on China's possible admission to the World Trade Organization.Both sides were tight-lipped about progress.John Sullivan, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce here, said the situation remained hopeful as long as, after 13 years of negotiations, the two sides kept talking about China's becoming a member of the rule-making body for global trade.

The Los Angeles Times said in an editorial yesterday:THE United States is probably a decade or more away from being able to deploy a system in East Asia to defend its forces and allies there against low-altitude missiles, but China is already threatening to turn that prospect into a source of contention.Beijing claims that such a system would provide the Japanese with a protective shield behind which they could develop offensive missiles to threaten China. It further fears seeing its strategic advantage diminished if the United States shares missile defense technology with Taiwan.

BEIJING -- In a surprise move, the United States and China are extending talks into a fourth day in an attempt to break the stalemate over Beijing's bid to enter the World Trade Organization."

BEIJING -- At first glance, it seemed like a terrific formula: a Chinese folk tale filled with adventure, Disney's masterful animation and tens of millions of Chinese children raised on Western movies.But instead of cashing in at the box office, Walt Disney's "Mulan" has bombed in her ancestral homeland."Mulan," which has grossed about $300 million worldwide, is the legendary story of a brave young Chinese woman who joins the army during the Sui Dynasty (589-618 A.D.) in place of her sick, elderly father.

QIAN XUESEN, 98 Father of China aerospace programs Qian Xuesen, a former rocket scientist at the California Institute of Technology who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., before being deported in 1955 on suspicion of being a Communist and who became known as the father of China's space and missile programs, has died. He was 98. Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, died Saturday in Beijing, China's state news agency reported. The cause was not given. Honored in his homeland for his "eminent contributions to science," Qian was credited with leading China to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, Silkworm anti-ship missiles, weather and reconnaissance satellites and to put a human in space in 2003.

The father fell to his knees weeping in a dramatic display of grief and contrition. The mother quietly buried her face in her hands. The 17-year-old boy, returning to China for the first time since he was adopted by a Maryland woman eight years ago, stood upright and motionless - whether out of shock or stoicism - with the only dry eye in the room. The interpreter stood quietly on the sidelines waiting for what seemed an eternity in which nobody spoke an intelligible word in any language.

The best thing about China Taste is that there are absolutely no surprises there, at least when it comes to the menu and the food; this is the same Chinese food we've all been eating since the big Szechuan explosion of the early 1980s. Of course, that familiarity could be the negative thing, too, depending on how you look at it. But with times like they are, it's sometimes good to know you can depend on getting exactly what you bargained for. What makes China Taste worth a visit, and not just for carry-out, is its memory-inducing ambience, impressive in a storefront restaurant - red leather booths with Art Deco flourishes, chandeliers and tinkly Chinese music playing over quiet conversations.

China has spent billions of dollars aiming to impress the world when the 2008 Olympic Games open in Beijing next week. But now the world is discovering that this rising giant has decided that it doesn't have to play by the rules. The government repeatedly promised that international journalists would have free access to the Internet as they cover the games. Instead, early arrivers this week ran head on into the sweeping censorship that hobbles Internet access for millions of Chinese. Press center access to more than 100 sites - including Amnesty International, which tracks world human rights abuses, and the BBC's Chinese language service - has been blocked.

1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance By Gavin Menzies William Morrow / 368 pages / $26.95 Between 1421 and 1423, according to Gavin Menzies, a former submarine commander in Great Britain's Royal Navy, four Chinese fleets organized by the great eunuch-admiral Zheng He circumnavigated the globe. Seventy years later, Menzies maintains, Christopher Columbus used the maps the Chinese voyagers prepared to "discover" America. Despite the skepticism and scorn of professional historians, Menzies' 1421 became a best-seller in 2002.

NEW YORK - Ted Koppel knows that persuading television viewers to tune into a four-part documentary about China's economic growth could be a difficult sell. So in the days leading to the broadcast of his latest Discovery Channel program, the veteran newsman took a drastic step to gin up interest: He brought his daughter's dog onto The Daily Show and suggested that the network might send Pepper to "Bideawee Farm" if the series doesn't get good ratings. All kidding aside, Koppel feels a particular sense of urgency about The People's Republic of Capitalism, which premieres tomorrow.

China Chefs, which opened in 1989, is tucked behind the Howard County General Hospital in back of a shopping center that is mostly medical offices. In all its years in business, the restaurant has rarely advertised, and it gives the impression that it prefers to be a place that only the discerning have discovered. On the wall, framed restaurant reviews from its early years claim that it is one of the best Chinese restaurants in the county, maybe even the state. (The key points are helpfully highlighted.

BEIJING - A top Taiwanese politician arrived in China yesterday for a six-day visit amid hope for warmer relations between the longtime foes. The head of the island's ruling party will meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao during a groundbreaking visit that follows the May 20 inauguration of a new Taiwanese president, Ma Ying-jeou, who is eager to fulfill a campaign pledge of improving ties. For China, the visit provides an opportunity ahead of the Olympic Games in August to project itself as a superpower committed to world peace.

The flavor of garlic is essential for the kitchen, beloved by cooks and gardeners alike. But you don't have to grow garlic to reap its taste fresh from your garden. There's an easy-to-cultivate plant - Chinese chive - that resembles other members of the onion family but offers that mild garlic flavor and doesn't produce a bulb. Chinese chive (Allium tuberosum) has many common names, including garlic chive, Chinese leek and, in Japan, nira. It's been used for centuries in Asian cooking, but can add something different to Western dishes, too. It's flat-leafed and has a beautiful white flower that comes up about a month after the first tender green shoots.

When Duncan Mackay, a journalist and co-author of a coming book on China's Olympic bid, ran with the Olympic torch through London on Sunday, scores of demonstrators converged on him, shouting their conflicting views about China's hosting of the Summer Games. "It was like running between two gangs, really," said Mackay, referring to the people protesting Chinese treatment of Tibet and other human rights abuses and their detractors, tempers flaring like the torch. "One of my friends had children there between the ages of 7 and 13, and for them it was quite frightening."