The Barbican in London opened its doors to reveal five decades' worth of possessions accumulated by the mother of the Chinese conceptual artist Song Dong. Jane Alison, senior curator at the Barbican, said that Waste Not was "so personal and poetic … it helps us to understand the reality of Chinese history and culture in the 20th century in a way that newspapers can't".

For some industry insiders, the trio personify a growing partnership between Beijing’s aspirations to export what it calls “soft power” – a sugarcoated version of China and its myriad social problems – to the West and Hollywood producers, who are bending over backwards to get a piece of the world’s fastest growing film market.

VaughanTown takes a new approach to a cultural exchange program which finally offers the chance to get to know Spain and its people without the language barrier. The program, based on one to one conversation sessions and group activities, runs for 6 days and 5 nights, from Sunday to Friday, almost all year round.

China is ready to work with the United States to advance people-to-people exchanges, Education Minister Yuan Guiren said prior to Vice-President Xi Jinping's visit to the US. People-to-people exchange is still an important driving force in today's increasingly close China-US relations.

In its latest move to reshape what Chinese viewers can watch on television, the government agency that oversees mass media has issued a new set of regulations that seek to restrict comedies, dramas and movies from abroad. The new regulations ban all imported programs during prime time and limit such shows to no more than 25 percent of a channel’s offerings each day.

Humor represents a more oblique manner of communicating ideas, and therefore can be a powerful medium to conduct public diplomacy. The beauty of using humor as a means to transmit ideas is that the jovial nature of comedy can indirectly communicate weightier subjects in a lighthearted manner that can diffuse weighty realities.

“If you are going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise, they’ll kill you.”
-George Bernard Shaw

I used to think that humor was one thing that didn’t translate in cross-cultural communication. In my travels, I had watched numerous attempts at jokes fail miserably as they got lost in translation or cultural nuances. Things often ended awkwardly amid the seemingly untranslatable nature of humor.

The deep connection engendered by music and the arts helps bridge barriers of languages and cultural traditions. A belief in the value of sharing our nation's music and arts is the motivating factor behind an organization that now has its home in St. Louis - American Voices.