We are pleased to continue supporting programmes running at The Hippodrome, Scotland’s number one ‘destination’ cinema and winner of Best Cinema Experience in Scotland 2019.
Adapted from one of China’s most beloved novels, this “spirit magic” film follows the adventures of characters familiar to Gen X from the cult BBC dubbed broadcasts of the Chinese TV series Monkey in the late 70s and early 80s.
Pious Buddhist monk Tripitaka is tasked by the Goddess of Mercy – on instructions from the Buddha – with the mission of journeying to “the West” and bringing back sacred texts. Accompanying Tripitaka on his quest are three disciples, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy, and the Dragon prince, who has taken the form of a white horse.
For more details and to book ticket, please visit HERE
HippFest Musician Masterclass with Frank Bockius and Günter Buchwald – Thu 20 Mar, 2-4pm, Reid Concert Hall
Masterclass: Musical accompaniment for Silent Film
The Reid School of Music at the Edinburgh School of Art invites HippFest audiences to take a ringside seat at a musicians’ masterclass led by Günter Buchwald and Frank Bockius, joining post-graduate students of composition to hear from two of the world’s foremost silent film musicians on the art of silent cinema accompaniment. Acclaimed composer, conductor and instrumentalist Günter Buchwald and world-renowned percussionist Frank Bockius will lead the session. Together, they bring decades of experience in accompanying, improvising, semi-improvising and composing for silent cinema.
Read more about the master class and sign up HERE
Join us in Abden House when the Confucius Institute for Scotland hosts a party to mark the arrival of the Year of the Dog from 6pm-9pm on Friday 23rd February 2018.
It searches for the Chinese common reader in three distinct places: in the materiality of cheaply produced texts-books as objects; in the usable-and wondrous-information packaged in their crowded pages—texts as meaning; and in the spaces where this knowledge was consumed—reading as cultural practice. The texts include cheap, string-bound, lithographed books such as wanbao quanshu 萬寶全書 (comprehensive compendia of myriad treasures), together with daily-use, letter-writing, household, and health manuals. Their contents include age-old cosmologies and fanciful representations of foreigners, together with treatments for opium addiction, methods for preventing cholera, and ways to graft a plant. The apprentices, workers, housewives, and lower-level bureaucrats who consumed this knowledge often did so on the fly, in the streets. Sitting, standing or leaning at street-side bookstalls, they avidly sought both the useful information and the marvelous diversion necessary to negotiate the epistemological uncertainty—and promise—of China’s revolutionary twentieth century.
Joan Judge is Professor in the Department of History at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press (2015), The Precious Raft of History: The Past, the West, and the Woman Question in China (2008), Print and Politics: ‘Shibao’ and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (1996), and co-editor of Women and the Periodical Press in China’s Global Twentieth Century: A Space of Their Own? (forthcoming), and Beyond Exemplar Tales: Women’s Biography in Chinese History (2011). She is currently engaged in a project with the working title “In Search of the Chinese Common Reader: Usable Knowledge and Wondrous Ignorance in the Age of Global Science, 1870-1955″.
FAN Lizhu 范丽珠 is Professor of Sociology at Fudan University. Director of Globalization and Religious Studies. As a pioneer scholar on the study of sociology of religion in China, she has engaged in historical and ethnographic studies of Chinese folk religious beliefs, sociological theories of religion, and the study of the trends of folk religious beliefs in modern Chinese society. Her most significant works include The Religion and Faith Transition of Chinese in the Contemporary Era: Field Research of the Adherents of Folk Religion in Shenzhen; China and the Cultural Sociology of Religion (co-authored with James Whitehead and Evelyn Whitehead); Sociology of Religion: Religion and China (co-authored with James Whitehead and Evelyn Whitehead). Academic articles include “Conversion and Indigenous Religions in China” (Co-authored with CHEN Na) in the Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion; “The Cult of Silkworm Mother as a Core of Local Community Religion in a North China Village” in China Quarterly, etc.. As an internationally recognized scholar, she taught at many distinguished universities, such as University of Chicago, University of California at San Diego, Lund University, Queen’s University, New School, Wabash College, University of British Columbia, Bergen University, University of Stockholm, University of Tokyo, etc.
LI Zhiqing is Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Economics, Fudan University. His research interests are: Environmental & Energy Economics; Public Economics; Political Economics; Economics of Climate Change; International Climate Policy; China’s Modern Economy
The Venerable Bird’s Eye View
Taiwan Season: Ever Never
Taiwan Season: Heart of Darkness fuses instrument, voice, body, drama, ritual and environment with traditional and folk elements, symbolic objects and contemporary theatre to explore the inner self and attempts to understand women who are slowly forgotten. Long hair symbolises a woman’s pathway through life. Time shrinks in her shadow. Aspiration, expectation, fear, secrets & ambition lay hidden deep inside.
In Taiwan Season: The Backyard Story let your imagination run as the jackets, shirts, dresses and trousers make friends and form relationships, reflecting those between parents, children and others. Taiwan’s first black-light object theatre company, Puppet Beings Theatre, seek to summon back the innocence of childhood and inject fresh vitality into children’s theatre by using everyday items and combining the contemporary with traditional puppet arts.
Inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Peony Pavilion this vibrant production blends emotionally driven movement, a spine-tingling soundscape and striking visual storytelling to bring a new twist to these classic texts, performed by a Chinese cast. The Dreamer is an international collaboration between Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre and Gecko, part of British Council’s 2016 Shakespeare Lives programme. 
Taiwan Season: 038 
Blue Bird
Little Shakespeare is big fun when two of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes are performed by fe nine to 16-year-old children from tChongqing Foreign Language School and Chongqing Renmin Primary School, each well known for their high standard of education and passion for theatre. A t family-friendly production, when superb young actors take on two iconic scenes in 40 minutes each.
The Magical Trip of a Bead
Divine Melody from Chinese Fiddlers
2047 Apologue from talented director Zhang Yimou is a highlight of the first day of the 
Published in 1957, Teahouse is a masterpiece of modern Chinese drama. The narrative revolves around the Yutai teahouse in Beijing and the life experiences of shopkeeper Wang. Teahouse mirrors the social turmoil at three crucial moments in Chinese history from the twilight of the dynastic era to the dawn of the People’s Republic of China.
This children’s musical theatre production tells the story of “Hua Mulan” who disguised herself as a man to take her father’s place among the recruits becoming a hero to the Chinese people and being awarded by the Emperor. The story has been told on the big screen in 1998 and 2004 by Disney. This production is brought to Edinburgh by Henan TV, Gahama Culture and Arts & Zhengzhou Linguaphone English Training.
‘I love this country, but who loves me?’ The play, Sink, is based on the true story of Lao She, a Chinese writer of great esteem, who, at one stage, was given the title of People’s Artist. However, this would all change during the cultural revolution as Lao She was deemed a reactionary and publicly humiliated. The production asks questions of freedom, identity, history and our own place and role in contemporary society.
My Journey through China sees Yi Dong makes her 16th annual return to Edinburgh. Part of 8th Glamour of Jasmine Chinese Arts Festival. She is one of the most celebrated international soloists of Chinese national musical instruments and one of the only five soloists who has given a recital in the Great Hall of the People. Venue 111 @ 12.30 and @ 14.30 on 20, 21, 22 August.
Zheng Programme for Chinese Lovers’ Day Playing an instrument with over 2,500 years of recorded history, after some 100 public recitals in the UK, international classical Zheng performer Yi Dong, makes her 16th annual return to Edinburgh to ‘indulge us with a rich spa of the spirits and mind’ (China Xinhua News Agency), with music of love stories and poems from China. Historic concerto The Butterfly Lovers is featured 
The Royal Society for Asian Affairs is working with the support of the Confucius Institute for Scotland in the University of Edinburgh, and with backing from the Scottish Government, to offer a free day long Asia focused programme for senior school students on Tuesday 3 October 2017. 
Venue
The first opportunity to hear from him is on the opening day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival 12th August at 12.15. Liu Zhenyun’s work reflects on aspects of China’s newly urbanised culture and his politically aware, satirical and darkly humourous writings have ensured his novels are widely translated. In an hour long conversation with Jenny Niven, Head of Literature, Creative Scotland, his latest novel ‘I Did Not Kill My Husband’ will be considered along with the tumultuous times in which we live.
Liu Zhenyun was born in 1958 in Henan province. In 1973 he joined the People’s Liberation Army and spent five years in the Gobi desert. After graduating from Peking University where he first published work in campus journals, he himself suggests that his writing career really only started after he became a journalist. Novels and short stories which have been translated into English (and numerous other languages) include Tapu Township; Chicken Feathers Everywhere; Working Unit; Cell Phone; The Cook, the Crook and the Tycoon and most recently I Did Not Kill My Husband