Photo contest

The Beijing-based Lens magazine has launched a photograph contest entitled Looking for Rising Stars.

The nonprofit competition invites professional and amateur photographers from across the nation to capture stories about young people who are striving to realize their dreams in different social strata.

The deadline for entry submission is August 15. For more details visit www.lensmagazine.com.cn.

Violins to go under the hammer

Italy's violin making studio Stradivari House and the Beijing Poly International Auctions Ltd will present a special sale of at least 12 classic violins created by Italian master violin makers at 8 pm on June 4 in Asian Grand Hotel.

The sale is the first of its kind in China's collectibles market. Highlights are two violins created respectively by Antonio Stradivari, and Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu, each estimated at 50 million yuan.

A preview runs from May 30 to June 3 at the National Agriculture Exhibition Center.

Art exhibition in Macao

Zhejiang-born artist Wang Deshui, now living in Tokyo, is holding his first solo art show until the end of May at Art Gallery in the Lin Zexu Memorial Hall in Macao.

Sponsored by the Macao Foundation and Macao Daily, the exhibition features more than 50 of the overseas Chinese artist's calligraphic works, rendered in various scripts, and figure paintings and birds-and-flowers works he has created over the past years.

Art gallery opens

The China Czech Contemporary Peking - a gallery for Sino-Czech arts and culture exchange events and exhibitions - was opened on May 28 in Beijing.

The gallery belongs to Chinese artist Qin Kunying and her Czech husband Jiri Straka.

The three-story gallery, covering a floor space of some 5,000 square meters, stands at the East End of Xiaopu Art Street in Songzhuang, in the Tongzhou district in eastern suburban Beijing.

The opening ceremony was coupled with a piano recital and a group exhibition with works by Qin and Straka, who is a Sinologist and Chinese ink artist.