Latest news with #Fang
Hypebeast
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hypebeast
Yuan Fang Faces Illness with Quiet Power in 'Spaying'
Summary Skarstedt Chelseapresents 'Spaying',Yuan Fang's second solo exhibition with the gallery. The show draws from Fang's recent breast cancer diagnosis, using painting to reflect on illness, identity, and the complexity of womanhood. Alongside large-scale canvases, she introduces smaller, intimate works she calls 'subplots,' fragments of a broader personal story. The title points to both her medical experience and the physical act of cutting, a key part of her process. Through layering, erasure, and refinement, Fang reveals dominant abstract forms that resemble torsos. These central figures carry a strong, bodily presence, confronting the viewer with emotional intensity. Inspired by traditional Chinese painting, Fang uses negative space to highlight what remains. Her slower, more thoughtful approach results in focused, deliberate compositions. Some works incorporate her medical imaging, like in 'Accumulating, Breaking Through the Defense Line', while others reflect emotional pressure and fatigue. Altogether, 'Spaying' expands Fang's exploration of femininity and resilience, offering moments of clarity and self-possession. The show will launch on September 4 to coincide with the Armory and Independent fairs. Skarstedt547 W 25th York, NY 10001
The Star
06-07-2025
- General
- The Star
Documentary on Lisbon Maru rescue premieres in Hong Kong
HONG KONG, July 6 (Xinhua) -- A premiere ceremony for the documentary "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru" was held in Hong Kong on Sunday to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. The documentary was based on true stories of the Pacific War. In October 1942, the Japanese army requisitioned a cargo vessel "Lisbon Maru" to carry more than 1,800 British prisoners of war (POWs) from Hong Kong to Japan. In violation of international conventions, the Japanese army did not put any markings on the ship to indicate the POWs inside. Torpedoed by the U.S. army, the vessel sank in the waters off the Zhoushan Islands in east China's Zhejiang Province. Local fishermen risked their own lives to rescue 384 POWs under Japanese gunfire. "Hong Kong is where the story of the 'Lisbon Maru' began," Fang Li, producer and director of the documentary, told Xinhua. It was particularly significant to be able to show Hong Kong viewers the story and humanity behind the story on the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, said Fang, who spent eight years making the documentary. The historical episodes in the documentary are a reminder of hard-won peace and stability, Starry Lee, a member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, said at the ceremony. Remembering the past will help enable Hong Kong residents, especially the younger generation, to better understand patriotism, she said. The documentary will hit screens on July 24.
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Business Standard
05-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Mines, magnets and Mao: How China built its global rare earth dominance
Rare earth metals were an afterthought for most world leaders until China temporarily suspended most exports of them a couple of months ago. But for almost half a century, they have received attention from the very top of the Chinese government. During his 27-year rule in China, Mao Zedong focused often on increasing how much iron and steel China produced, but seldom on its quality. The result was high production of weak iron and steel that could not meet the needs of the industry. In the late 1940s, metallurgists in Britain and the United States had developed a fairly low-tech way to improve the quality of ductile iron, which is widely used for pipelines, car parts and other applications. The secret? Add a dash of the rare earth cerium to the metal while it is still molten. It was one of the early industrial uses of rare earths. And unlike most kinds of rare earths, cerium was fairly easy to chemically separate from ore. When Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader in 1978, he moved quickly to fix the country's iron and steel industry. Deng named a top technocrat, Fang Yi, as a vice premier and also as the director of the powerful State Science and Technology Commission. Fang immediately took top geologists and scientists to Baotou, a city in China's Inner Mongolia that had vast steel mills and the country's largest iron ore mine nearby. Baotou had already made much of the iron and steel for China's tanks and artillery under Mao, but Fang's team made an important decision to extract more than iron from the mine. The city's iron ore deposit was laced with large quantities of so-called light rare earths. These included not just cerium, for ductile iron and for glass manufacturing, but also lanthanum, used in refining oil. The iron ore deposit also held medium rare earths, like samarium. The United States had started using samarium in the 1970s to make the heat-resistant magnets needed for electric motors inside supersonic fighter jets and missiles. 'Rare earths have important application value in steel, ductile iron, glass and ceramics, military industry, electronics and new materials,' Fang declared during his visit to Baotou in 1978, according to an exhibit at the city's museum. At the time, Sino-American relations were improving. Soon after his Baotou visit, Fang took top Chinese engineers to visit America's most advanced factories, including Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas assembly plants near Los Angeles. Rare earth metals are tightly bound together in nature. Prying them apart, particularly the heavier rare earths, requires many rounds of chemical processes and huge quantities of acid. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had each developed similar ways to separate rare earths. But their techniques were costly, requiring stainless steel vats and piping as well as expensive nitric acid. China ordered government research institutes to devise a cheaper approach, said Constantine Karayannopoulos, a chemical engineer and former chief executive of several of the largest North American rare earth companies. The Chinese engineers figured out how to separate rare earths using inexpensive plastic and hydrochloric acid instead. The cost advantage, together with weak enforcement of environmental standards, allowed China's rare earth refineries to undercut competitors in the West. Facing increasingly stiff environmental regulations, almost all of the West's refineries closed. Separately, China's geologists discovered that their country held nearly half the world's deposits of rare earths, including rich deposits of heavy rare earths in south-central China, valuable for magnets in cars as well as for medical imaging and other applications. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese refinery engineers mastered the task of prying apart heavy rare earths. That gave China an almost total monopoly on heavy rare earth production. 'The Middle East has oil,' Deng said in 1992. 'China has rare earths.' By then, he and Fang had already trained the next leader to guide the country's rare earth industry: a geologist named Wen Jiabao. He had earned a master's degree in rare earth sciences in the late 1960s at the Beijing Institute of Geology, when most of the rest of China was paralyzed during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Wen went on to become a vice premier in 1998 and then China's premier from 2003 to 2013. During a visit to Europe in 2010, he declared that little happened on rare earth policy in China without his personal involvement.
Time of India
05-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
China's rare-earth origin story, explained
Rare-earth metals were an afterthought for most world leaders until China temporarily suspended most exports of them a couple months ago. But for almost a half-century, they have received attention from the very top of the Chinese government. During his 27-year rule in China, Mao Zedong focused often on increasing how much iron and steel China produced, but seldom on its quality. The result was high production of weak iron and steel that could not meet the needs of the industry. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Egypt: Unsold Sofas Prices May Surprise You (Prices May Surprise You) Sofas | Search Ads Search Now Undo In the late 1940s, metallurgists in Britain and the United States had developed a fairly low-tech way to improve the quality of ductile iron, which is widely used for pipelines, car parts and other applications. The secret? Add a dash of the rare-earth cerium to the metal while it is still molten. It was one of the early industrial uses of rare earths. And unlike most kinds of rare earths, cerium was fairly easy to chemically separate from ore. When Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader in 1978, he moved quickly to fix the country's iron and steel industry. Deng named a top technocrat, Fang Yi, as a vice premier and also as a director of the powerful State Science and Technology Commission . Live Events Fang immediately took top geologists and scientists to Baotou, a city in China's Inner Mongolia that had vast steel mills and the country's largest iron ore mine nearby. Baotou had already made much of the iron and steel for China's tanks and artillery under Mao, but Fang's team made an important decision to extract more than iron from the mine. The city's iron ore deposit was laced with large quantities of so-called light rare earths. These included not just cerium, for ductile iron and for glass manufacturing, but also lanthanum, used in refining oil. The iron ore deposit also held medium rare earths, including samarium. The United States had started using samarium in the 1970s to make the heat-resistant magnets needed for electric motors inside supersonic fighter jets and missiles. "Rare earths have important application value in steel, ductile iron, glass and ceramics, military industry, electronics and new materials," Fang declared during his visit to Baotou in 1978, according to an exhibit at the city's museum. At the time, Sino-American relations were improving. Soon after his Baotou visit, Fang took top Chinese engineers to visit America's most advanced factories, including Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas assembly plants near Los Angeles. Rare-earth metals are tightly bound together in nature. Prying them apart, particularly the heavier rare earths, requires many rounds of chemical processes and huge quantities of acid. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had each developed similar ways to separate rare earths. But their techniques were costly, requiring stainless steel vats and piping, as well as expensive nitric acid. China ordered government research institutes to devise a cheaper approach, said Constantine Karayannopoulos, a chemical engineer and former CEO of several of the largest North American rare-earth companies. Chinese engineers figured out how to separate rare earths using inexpensive plastic and hydrochloric acid instead. The cost advantage, together with weak enforcement of environmental standards, allowed China's rare-earth refineries to undercut competitors in the West. Facing increasingly stiff environmental regulations, almost all of the West's refineries closed. Separately, China's geologists discovered that their country held nearly half of the world's deposits of rare earths, including rich deposits of heavy rare earths in south-central China, valuable for magnets in cars and for medical imaging and other applications. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese refinery engineers mastered the task of prying apart heavy rare earths. That gave China an almost total monopoly on heavy rare-earth production. "The Middle East has oil," Deng said in 1992. "China has rare earths." By then, he and Fang had already trained the next leader to guide the country's rare-earth industry : a geologist named Wen Jiabao. He had earned a master's degree in rare-earth sciences in the late 1960s at the Beijing Institute of Geology, when most of the rest of China was paralyzed during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Wen went on to become a vice premier in 1998 and then China's premier from 2003-13. During a visit to Europe in 2010, he declared that little happened on rare-earth policy in China without his personal involvement. (This article originally appeared in The New York Times.)
New Paper
03-07-2025
- New Paper
Audrey Fang death: Suspect Mitchell Ong linked to DNA found on victim's body
One of two DNA profiles found on the body of a Singaporean woman killed in Spain in April 2024 has been linked by Spanish experts to the only suspect, a Singaporean man. Two male DNA profiles were earlier found on Ms Audrey Fang's body, and Spain's National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Science found that one of them matches the paternal lineage of suspect Mitchell Ong, news outlet La Opinion de Murcia reported on June 18. The match was for the Y-chromosome haplotype, which is a set of genetic markers passed directly from father to son. The second DNA profile has no links with Ong's DNA. Ong's lawyer Maria Jesus Ruiz de Castaneda said the findings cannot be used to identify a person conclusively, as the genetic marker is shared with all male members of Ong's paternal lineage. She added that the finding "reinforces the need to expand the investigation to include other possible individuals". "Mitchell Ong maintains his innocence, fully trusts the work of the Spanish justice system, and will continue to collaborate in all necessary to clarify the truth," she said. Ong, 43, was arrested in Spain in April 2024 after Ms Fang's body was found with multiple stab wounds earlier that month in the town of Abanilla. Ms Fang, an architect, left Singapore on April 4 to travel alone to Xabia, in Spain's Valencia region. She was supposed to return eight days later but became uncontactable on April 10. The 39-year-old died from knife wounds and head trauma. DNA from two men was found on her clothes, La Opinion reported in March, raising the possibility that more than one person was involved in her death. Ong, who was previously an insurance agent and a financial expert, was also found to be nominated as the sole beneficiary of Ms Fang's Central Provident Fund savings, with the accounts reportedly containing $498,000.
