Walasse Ting, Who Bridged Cultures With Paint and Prose

The painter and poet Walasse Ting in Hong Kong in 1953.Credit...The Estate of Walasse Ting

Overlooked No More: Walasse Ting, Who Bridged Cultures With Paint and Prose

His style as a poet and artist was informed by his upbringing in Shanghai and his years in Paris. He then joined the Pop-fueled studios of New York.

By Will Heinrich

Published May 16, 2025Updated May 29, 2025

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

Flickering among the major figures of postwar art — the Minimalist sculptor Dan Flavin, the avant-garde artist Pierre Alechinsky, the abstract painter Sam Francis and others — is the radiant shadow of Walasse Ting.

Walasse Ting / Cats

 

WALASSE TING

CATS

The History of Walasse Ting

丁雄泉 TINGS MUSE; THE HISTORY OF WALASSE TING

BERT KUIPERS

OWNER BERT KUIPER KUNSTHANDEL

In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s of the last century, Walasse Ting's work was immensely popular in America and Europe.

Lotus Foot Metamorphosis

 

Chinese Lotus Foot Shoes

Lotus Foot Metamorphosis

Da Zi Bao, Red Empire Changing Colors: A novel-in-progress

18 DECEMBER 2019, 

HALL GARDNER

In black silk, head covered over in a yellow and white scarf, she hobbles in pain down the street. An elderly woman, her feet and four toes had been mangled and bound as an infant, a relic of yesteryear's Confucian ideal of elite Han beauty—a bizarre and aberrant statement of protest against the bestial behavior of the Manchu barbarians—that foot fetish of the three to five-inch lotus root. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson / China 1948-1949, 1958

 

Celebrations for the ninth anniversary of the People’s Republic, Beijing, 1 October 1958

Henri Cartier-Bresson, China 1948-1949, 1958 | Book 

April 29, 2020

While Henri Cartier-Bresson is famous for having a strongly Euro-centric sensibility and choice of subject matter – one of his most famous collections is called The Europeans – he had a great affinity for, and experience of, East Asia.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

Cartier-Bresson is Here 

Yongquan Jin;

 

Jinsheng Zhao

December 21, 2021

On June 16, 1958, French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson arrived in Beijing. According to a press release from the Chinese Photographers Association (CPA), Cartier-Bresson came to China on a “photographic visit” for a book to be entitled “Ten Years of the People's Republic of China.”¹ As “friends will be treated with good wine,”² on June 26, the president and vice president of the CPA received Cartier-Bresson and hosted him at a banquet according to Chinese etiquette. During Cartier-Bresson's shooting in Beijing, the CPA also sent someone to accompany him.

 

Red Silk: A Conversation with Robert Cliver

Written On 19 October 2020. 
Author: Ivan Franceschini And Robert Cliver
Made In China: Spectral Revolutions May–August 2020

In Red Silk: Class, Gender, and Revolution in China’s Yangzi Delta Silk Industry (Harvard University Press 2020), Robert Cliver reconstructs the history of Chinese silk production in the Yangzi River Delta during the wars, crises, and revolutions of the twentieth century. Based on extensive research in Chinese archives and focussed on the 1950s, the book tells the stories of male silk weavers in Shanghai factories, who enjoyed close ties to the Party-state and benefitted greatly from socialist policies after 1949, and the young women toiling in silk thread mills or filatures, without powerful organisations or ties to the new regime. Both groups of workers and their employers had to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, and their actions compelled the Party-state to adjust its policies, which in turn produced ever-new challenges. The results, though initially positive for many, were ultimately disastrous. By the end of the 1950s, there was widespread conflict and deprivation among silk workers and, despite its impressive recovery under Communist rule, the industry faced a crisis worse than either war or revolution.

Scholars and Spies / Experiences from the Soviet Union, Communist Romania, and China

Scholars and Spies: Experiences from the Soviet Union, Communist Romania, and China

Written On 17 June 2020. 

Author: Ivan Franceschini

In response to the renewed emphasis of the central government on national security, in November 2015 the authorities of Jilin province, in northeast China, introduced a hotline to report possible spies. The dilemma was how to recognise a spy. Local officials instructed concerned citizens to look out for eight revealing signs (Yang 2015). First, spies never explained their work with clarity, wore different professional hats at the same time, and had plenty of funding at their disposal. Second, at gatherings they often came up with controversial topics then withdrew in the shadows to observe how people reacted in order to select contacts to develop. Third, foreign correspondents, journalists writing about foreign affairs, missionaries, or people involved with NGOs were all likely to be spies. Fourth, spies had proper business cards, but worked irregular hours and the information on the card did not hold up to closer scrutiny. Fifth, people who had studied abroad in many different countries or whose history of studying overseas did not match their age were most likely spies. Sixth, spies enjoyed asking sensitive questions, especially on politics, military affairs, public opinion, and trade. Seventh, they held regular meetings in this or that place to exchange materials and documents. Finally, they could be found at academic conferences and business meetings, where they often gave reactionary speeches and exaggerated the positive aspects of foreign countries.

Ivan Franceschini / The Last Days of Shi Yang

 

Shi Yang

The Last Days of Shi Yang

Ivan Franceschini
Written On 7 July 2018
Made In China: Anybody Out There? April–July 2018

When they knocked at his door on the afternoon of 7 February 1923, Shi Yang had just come home after a day in court. Guns in hand, a dozen uniformed policemen rushed into the room, led by a detective in plain clothes. The officer was the first to break the silence: ‘The boss of our department wants to meet you for a chat. Hurry up!’ An experienced lawyer, Shi Yang was not easily intimidated: ‘Who is your boss?’ ‘The head of Hankou police, don’t you understand? Stop talking and follow me!’ ‘Since the director of such an important department has ordered you to come in person to fetch me, I will obviously come. Just please don’t be so aggressive. There is no need.’ Compliant, he followed them outside, despite the protests of his wife who insisted on accompanying him. ‘And why would you do that? Go back inside. I didn’t violate any law: wherever they take me, there is nothing to worry about,’ he reassured her.

 

Who was the “real” Aladdin? From Chinese to Arab in 300 Years

The following is a guest post by Arafat A. Razzaque, a PhD candidate in History & Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He specializes in medieval Islamic social and cultural history, and has a secondary interest in the Thousand and One Nights, stories from which he first read in Bengali translation.

This article is the first of a two-part series about Aladdin. Part two, entitled “Who wrote Aladdin? The Forgotten Syrian Storyteller,” can be found here.

***

The recent clamor around Disney’s forthcoming remake of Aladdin (1992) was a vivid reminder that an entire generation of people today grew up enchanted by the film. Rumors about the studio’s alleged difficulty finding an actor to play Aladdin sparked renewed criticism of Hollywood’s diversity problem. The comedian Hari Kondabolu responded on Twitter: “Lots of brown kids got called Aladdin growing up. Now you…don’t want to cast one of us?”

Fear Factors / On the Psychology of Safety and Danger

 

Illustration by Jun Cen

Fear Factors

On the Psychology of Safety and Danger

By Veronique Greenwood

When I moved to China nearly two years ago, one of the first things I bought was a bicycle. I live on a university campus, where everyone rides, and the bike was cheap: $17 for an ancient Five Rams cruiser, with a lively color scheme of teal and rust. I used to cycle to work when I lived in New York, dodging tourists and threading in between delivery trucks. But the moment I pulled out onto a street in China, it became clear that this was going to be a different experience.

Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study

• Prof Stein Emil Vollset, DrPH
• Emily Goren, PhD
• Chun-Wei Yuan, PhD
• Jackie Cao, MS
• Amanda E Smith, MPA
• Thomas Hsiao, BS
• et al.
• 
  

July 14, 2020

Sumary

Brackground

Understanding potential patterns in future population levels is crucial for anticipating and planning for changing age structures, resource and health-care needs, and environmental and economic landscapes. Future fertility patterns are a key input to estimation of future population size, but they are surrounded by substantial uncertainty and diverging methodologies of estimation and forecasting, leading to important differences in global population projections. Changing population size and age structure might have profound economic, social, and geopolitical impacts in many countries. In this study, we developed novel methods for forecasting mortality, fertility, migration, and population. We also assessed potential economic and geopolitical effects of future demographic shifts.

China coronavirus cases may have been four times official figure, says study

THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

China coronavirus cases may have been four times official figure, says study

More than 232,000 could have been infected in first wave, compared with then-official total of 55,000, as US envoy calls for rethink of US-China relationship

Helen Davidson
Thu 23 April 2020

More than 232,000 people may have been infected in the first wave of Covid-19 in mainland China, four times the official figures, according to a study by Hong Kong researchers.

Mainland China reported more than 55,000 cases as of 20 February but, according to research by academics at Hong Kong University’s school of public health published in the Lancet, the true number would have been far greater if the definition of a Covid-19 case that was later used had been applied from the outset.

China has now reported more than 83,000 cases. Globally, the death toll from the coronavirus has exceeded 183,000, with the number of cases worldwide standing at more than 2.6 million.

China’s national health commission issued seven versions of a case definition for Covid-19 between 15 January and 3 March, and the study found these changes had a “substantial effect” on how many infections which were detected as cases.

It comes as China’s ambassador to the US called for “a serious rethink of the foundations” of the two countries’ relationship, while also criticising US politicians for ignoring scientists and making “groundless” accusations.

The Hong Kong study analysed data up to 20 February culled from the World Health Organization’s mission to Wuhan.

It estimated that each of the first four changes increased the proportion of cases detected and counted, by between 2.8 and 7.1 times.

“If the fifth version of the case definition had been applied throughout the outbreak with sufficient testing capacity, we estimated that by 20 February 2020, there would have been 232,000 … confirmed cases in China as opposed to the 55,508 confirmed cases reported,” the study said.

As scientific knowledge and laboratory capability evolved, the definition of a confirmed case has broadened to include cases with milder symptoms, or without epidemiological links to Wuhan or other known cases.

The report said these changes should be taken into account when looking at the rate of the epidemic’s growth and doubling times.

China has faced continual scepticism over its reporting of cases. Last week it revealed the death toll in Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated, was in fact 50% higher than first reported.

On Wednesday the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said the US believed that China’s ruling Communist party failed to report the outbreak of the new coronavirus in a timely manner.

The US and Australia have called for an international investigation into the handling of the outbreak.

On Wednesday China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai said there needed to be “a serious rethink of the foundations of this important relationship” between the two countries. He also criticised US politicians for being “preoccupied in their efforts for stigmatisation and groundless accusation”, instead of listening to scientists.

The US, mainly via president Donald Trump, has amplified theories that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab, without evidence.

On Wednesday evening, Trump rebuked a state governor and Republican ally over his decision to reopen bowling alleys, hair salons and other businesses on Friday “in violation” of the phased federal guidelines.

Despite having voiced support for US citizens protesting against lockdowns, Trump said of Georgia governor Brian Kemp: “I want him to do what he thinks is right, but I disagree with him on what he’s doing.”

The US’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, also urged against Kemp’s decision.

At the same press conference however there was complete contradiction between Trump and his experts over the risk of a virus resurgence later in the year.

Trump said the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Robert Redfield, had been “totally misquoted” in an article about the dangers of the virus during flu season. Redfield, standing by Trump at the podium, told reporters: “I’m accurately quoted in the Washington Post”.

Fauci said he was “convinced” of the risk of resurgence, adding: “We will have coronavirus in the fall.”

Other developments include:

• The world is on track for a recession of “unprecedented depth in the post-war period”, ratings agency Fitch said in a note issued on Thursday. The agency now expected world gross domestic product to tumble by 3.9% in 2020.
• Asian stock markets rose on Thursday as the combination of a rebound in crude prices from historic lows and the promise of more US government aid to cushion the coronavirus-ravaged economy helped calm nervous markets.
• South Korea’s economy, the world’s 12th largest, saw its worst performance in more than a decade in the first quarter of this year, the central bank said Thursday, with officials warning of a bigger impact still to come.
• Two pet cats in New York state have tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first confirmed cases in companion animals in the US, federal officials said Wednesday.
• Missing Wuhan citizen journalist Li Zehua has reappeared. He went missing for almost two months after posting videos from Wuhan during the coronavirus outbreak but has turned up, saying he was detained by police and forcibly quarantined.
• The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said that there is still “a long way to go” in tackling the coronavirus crisis around the world.
• The first case has been recorded among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The outbreak of the virus at crowded camps has been feared since the start of the crisis.

THE GUARDIAN

The Vengeance of History / Thirty Years of Foreseeable Retrogression

 

Ronald Reagan and Michail Gorbachev

The Vengeance of History

Thirty Years of Foreseeable Retrogression

18 DECEMBER 2018, 

HALL GARDNER

I.
The year 1989 had brought great hopes and expectations. That was the year when millions protested against the Soviet and Chinese totalitarian leviathans and when West and East Germany unified.