Yong Feng, an award-winning vocalist from the Second Artillery Art Troupe, has released a new album, Happy Forever.

A graduate from the China Conservatory of Music, Yong was the winner of the sixth Golden Bell Awards singing competition in 2007.

His latest album is a collection of original songs written for him by a group of lyricists and composers. After its release, Yong will perform a series of concerts at Beijing universities to promote it.

A generation on camera

In China, the term "post-90s generation" refers to those born after 1990. Often they are stereotyped as self-centered and naive, but some of them are trying to prove that is not the whole picture.

Viva Youth, a 50-minute movie with a post-90s cast and crew, is now available on Tudou, the Chinese video-sharing website.

The film centers on several teenagers who make a documentary after accidentally deleting one made by the father of a member of the group.

The filmmakers also encouraged fellow youngsters to shoot their own short videos about what they think of the post-90s group and submit them to Tudou. Selected videos were included in the final movie.

Han Hong's health mission

Singer-songwriter Han Hong launched her Charity Action three years ago with a simple desire to help the needy. Since then, the group has helped 100 or so volunteers to visit victims of disasters in Sichuan province's Wenchuan and Zhouqu, Gansu province.

Her latest move will see about 100 health experts travel 1,000 km from Qamdo in the Tibetan autonomous region to the regional capital Lhasa to visit children and elderly people.

With funds of 6 million yuan ($940,000), the volunteers will help improve medical conditions, such as establishing a center for eyesight recovery, and offer free health services.

All smiles in Xi'an

The ancient city of Xi'an defeated four other major Chinese cities in a recent survey of citizens' happiness levels.

During the two-week campaign in the Shaanxi provincial capital, as well as Beijing, Shenzhen in Guangdong province, Henan's provincial capital Zhengzhou and Kunming, capital of Yunnan's province, almost 4 million people cast their votes at polling stations next to Happy Bus Shelters set up by Carlsberg Chill, a Danish beer brand.

Around 55 percent of 772,021 residents in Xi'an said they are happy with their lives in the city, which is hosting this year's World Horticultural Expo. Shenzhen, host of the World University Games, came second, with 54.63 percent of 729,933 voters saying they are happy.

Beijing ranked third with 54.17 percent of 804,103 people, Kunming was fourth with 53.7 percent of 752,108, while Zhengzhou was last with 52.89 percent of 753,581.

In a separate online survey of 66,418 netizens, however, Kunming came out top, followed by Xi'an, Shenzhen, Beijing and Zhengzhou.

Singing a family's praises

Zhejiang Xiaobaihua Yueju Opera Troupe will stage The Family Who Collected Books, a new piece in their repertoire, at Beijing's National Center for Performing Arts on Aug 20 - 21, troupe leader Mao Weitao has announced.

Scripted by Guo Xiaonan, the opera is based on the stories of the legendary Fan family of Ningbo, Zhejiang province, who 400 years ago built Tianyige, which today remains the oldest collection of ancient books in Asia.

On Aug 11, the troupe donated a book and an album about their artistic creations centering on the ups and downs of the Fan Family and their continued efforts to build the Tianyige private library in the capital's National Library.

Tianyige Museum also made donations - two sets of duplicated ancient books (56 tomes), one about imperial exam records of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the other about imperial edicts of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

China Daily