Li Yu to direct Fan Bingbing again, in Double Exposure

Mainland actress Fan Bingbing joins hands with female director Li Yu for the third time to shoot a thriller named Double Exposure.

The film also stars rising actor Feng Shaofeng and veteran Joan Chen.

Before winning a best actress award at the 2010 Tokyo International Film Festival for her role in Li's Buddha Mountain, Fan was often stereotyped as just a pretty face.

That is also one of the reasons for her to team up with Li again, Fan said at a recent press conference to announce the film's start.

Get up, close and personal with genius

Stroke of Genius, a recent exhibition featuring the works of two Chinese-American sisters, shows an artistic maturity far beyond their ages.

Fourteen-year-old Victoria Yin's works are greatly influenced by the grandeur of Michelangelo, the precision of Leonardo da Vinci and the imagination of Salvador Dali. Elder sister Zoe Yin, 10, uses white space as human figures against a brightly colored background, and creates strong comparisons between multi-colored figures and backdrops, producing a dreamy vision.

The exhibition was held at Beijing's World Art Museum at the China Millennium Monument.

Jackie Chan's son turns down role in father's film

Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie Chan, says he will not star in his father's new film Chinese Zodiac.

The 29-year-old singer/actor made the announcement during a recent promotional activity for Lee's Adventure, a romantic film he leads.

Jackie Chan has been working on Chinese Zodiac for decades. He said it will be his last kungfu flick. He also told a recent news conference he will try to persuade his son to join the cast.

Jaycee, however, says he will not appear in the film, because he's concerned people would think he got the role just because of his father.

Lee's Adventure, which infuses action scenes with animation, premiered earlier this month.

Beijing Music Festival art songs a success

The 14th Beijing Music Festival presented a concert of Chinese art songs at the Forbidden City Concert Hall last week.

Tenors Zhang Jianyi and Liao Changyong, and soprano Huang Ying performed more than 20 Chinese art songs at the concert, such as How Can I Stop Thinking about Him by Zhao Yuanren and I Live by the Origin of the Yangtze River by Qing Zhu.

Chinese composers began to write art songs with Chinese poetry at the beginning of the 20th century.

To promote Chinese art songs, Beijing Music Festival gave free tickets away, which were snapped up three hours after public bookings started.

FT forum discusses nation's future

Senior public and private sector strategists and decision-makers in education, technology and finance gathered on Oct 21 for the FT Innovation in Education Forum, the second major international conference on the transformation of China's education sector, organized by Financial Times and sponsored by Pearson Education.

This year's event focused on steps needed to develop the human capital to fuel China's continued economic growth. Themes included whether Chinese education puts enough attention on developing specific skills of its talent base along with evolvement of its economic structure; whether there is a sufficient focus on the transition from the campus to the workplace; and whether an increasing number of potential managers graduating from MBA programs are specialized enough for China's economic situation or more suited to jobs abroad.