CND 27-2-92 EP
Anthony Lee
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===================== Europe / Pacific Section (CND-EP) =====================
February 27, 1992
---------------------------- Table of Contents ---------------------------
No. Subject # of Lines
1. Mainland China Shuts Embassy in Latvia over Taiwan Ties .............30
2. Kazakh Premier Signs Trade Pacts with China .........................40
3. Job Openings in Singapore ...........................................10
4. Suzhou Master: Story of Artist Chen Yifei ..........................120
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1. Mainland China Shuts Embassy in Latvia over Taiwan Ties
===================================================================(30 lines)
From: A CND Contributor, Source: Reuters
BEIJING, Feb 25, Reuter - China has withdrawn its embassy from Latvia after
Taiwan set up a consulate in the capital, Riga, the official New China News
Agency said on Tuesday.
Beijing protested earlier this month against the Baltic republic's
establishment of consular relations with the island, which the Chinese
consider a breakaway province.
The Chinese government opposes recognition of both Taiwan and China, saying
it is the sole legitimate government of the Chinese people.
The Foreign Ministry demanded that Latvia reverse its January 29 decision to
open the consulate, the agency said.
"In disregard of the solemn and just stand of the Chinese side, the Latvian
side went so far as to permit the Taiwan authorities to open their so-called
'consulate-general' in Riga, further impairing their relations between China
and Latvia and the friendship between the two peoples," the news agency said.
"Under these circumstances the Chinese government has decided to withdraw the
embassy of the People's Republic of China from Latvia for the time being," it
said.
The Chinese charge d'affaires in Latvia, Chen Di, announced Beijing's decision
to shut the embassy and left Riga with his staff on Monday, the agency said in
a separate dispatch from Moscow.
Beijing recognised the Baltic republic soon after it became independent last
year, in what foreign analysts said was a bid to head off a diplomatic
challenge by Taiwan.
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2. Kazakh Premier Signs Trade Pacts with China
===================================================================(40 lines)
From: Charles Mok, Date: 26 Feb 92, Source: Reuters, abridged by CND
BEIJING (UPI) -- Kazakhstan Prime Minister Sergei Tereshchenko said Wednesday
his talks with Chinese leaders yielded progress on border disputes and trade
but that the two sides skirted discussion of their nuclear arsenals and
regional ethnic tensions.
Tereshchenko and Chinese Premier Li Peng signed a joint communique and eight
pacts on transport, investment, trade and even Beijing's offer of commodity
loans to the former Soviet republic's wheezing economy, China's official
Xinhua news agency said.
Tereshchenko, addressing a news conference, said one agreement will allow
China's flourishing light industrial enterprises to open shops in the newly
independent central Asian country and to invest their profits in ``mutually
profitable projects'' in Kazakhstan.
The Kazakhstan leader said the joint communique, to be published Thursday,
touches on how Beijing and Alma Ata intend to resolve festering territorial
disputes along more than 1,000 miles of rugged frontier.
``We shall continue to discuss these (border) problems,'' he said without
giving details.
On the nuclear issue, Tereshchenko said he had ``no details'' about how many
Chinese and Kazakh missiles were aimed at each other and that he and Li did
not discuss their strategic arsenals.
Tereshchenko indicated he was unsatisfied with global controls on nuclear
warheads and reiterated Kazakhstan's concerns over the huge cost of its
denuclearization plans. By some estimates Kazakhstan is the world's No. 3
nuclear power after the United States and Russia.
``During some period in the future these weapons will be eliminated from
Kazakh territory, but we need time and finance,'' he said. ``We need inter-
national guarantees of the non-use of nuclear weapons against Kazakhstan.''
``China and Kazakhstan are very big countries and that is why they should
coexist peacefully,'' Tereshchenko said. ``As to the question (of nuclear
arsenals) you raised, we did not touch on this question during the talks with
Premier Li Peng.''
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3. Job Openings in Singapore
===================================================================(10 lines)
From: <CYX...@NTUVAX.bitnet> Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92
The School of Civil and Structural Engineering, Nanyang Technological Univ.
of Singapore, has openings for research fellows in the areas of environmental
engineering, hydrology and transportation. Your can write to the following
address for information:
Dr. Zhou Yingxin
School of CSE
Nanyang Tachnological University
Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 2264
Or send e-mail to Dr. Zhou Yingxin at: CYX...@NTUVAX.BITNET
=============================================================================
4. Suzhou Master: Story of Artist Chen Yifei
==================================================================(120 lines)
From: Wu, Fang
Source: AP (2/21/92)
Artist Chen Yifei left China with $38, his brushes and memories of persecu-
tion. In a dozen years, his paintings have become a favorite of collectors
and made him a multimillionaire.
"This is America. I couldn't have done this in China. Here you can choose;
success depends on your character," says Chen, 45, speaking in a heavily ac-
cented English. "My art is a bridge between East and West. Some people
call it romantic realism."
His richly hued human figures include hundreds of portraits of Western musi-
cians and technically near-perfect images of native Chinese musicians.
But Chen's painted China also has memories of torment, as in the weather-
beaten bodies of struggling Tibetan farmers, their faces twisted by life.
Chinese beauty, he notes during an interview in his upper East Side studio,
is "a little different. It's more melancholy, quieter than that of the
West."
When he's overcome by homesickness, he paints the landscapes where he played
as a child. A favorite is Suzhou, with its hazy waterways an hour by train
from Shanghai in the Jiangsu province of his birth.
"They call it the Venice of the East, with 1,000 bridges over canals, and
boats to go to the market, to work, to school," he says.
It was in Shanghai, where he grew up, that the artist cared for his ailing
father, an engineer accused of being an enemy of Mao's Cultural Revolution
and forced to do hard physical labor at a factory.
"I heard him working till 3 a m. some nights, writing political criticisms
of himself for the authorities. They told him he was a capitalist. Then he
had to get to the factory by 5:30 a.m. in winter, to break the ice off the
ground before the other workers arrived," Chen said.
The elder Chen had a heart attack and died in a hospital hallway. "We
couldn't even get a bed," Chen recalled.
After his mother also died, he left for Hong Kong in 1980, taking along five
bags stuffed with brushes, tubes of paint and canvasses, a student visa for
the United States and $38. His wife and 6-year-old son stayed behind.
While living with a filmmaker friend in Hong Kong, Chen painted commissioned
portraits to earn the money for the air fare to New York and a semester of
tuition at New York University.
He arrived at Kennedy International Airport one midnight in September 1980.
He spoke no English, "and I was a little nervous, because I heard New York
was dangerous."
A Chinese-born passenger filled out the entry papers he couldn't read. The
man also dialed the one telephone number Chen had, that of a friend he had
cabled about his arrival. The number was disconnected.
The fellow passenger drove Chen to the friend's address, where tenants
pointed out a nearby house to which he had moved. By the time they rang the
doorbell, the man had returned from his night job at a restaurant.
The next morning, Chen got directions for the subway, rode into Manhattan
and enrolled at the foreign student office.
During his first week here, the artist wandered past Hammer Galleries on
West 57th Street, founded by the late oil magnate Armand Hammer.
"I didn't know what a gallery was, because China had no galleries, no art
market, only propaganda exhibitions," he says. "There was a guard outside,
and I thought he was a policeman. I was afraid to go in, thinking it was
private, and I just walked away." But the next year a friend who worked as
an art expert for Hammer arranged for Chen to meet the gallery president.
His reaction was enthusiastic and the gallery ended up buying 12 paintings
at $3,000 apiece.
"I couldn't sleep that night. For me, it was a dream, like going to
heaven," he says. Hammer Galleries ended up not only representing him but
helped him obtain a permanent visa.
Last September in Hong Kong, Christie's auctioned his "Lingering Melodies
>From the Xunyang River" for $176,282 a world record price for a Chinese oil
painting at auction. The work is a scene from ancient Chinese folklore, in
which the music of three phantom women soothes a depressed man.
And in November, Christie's in New York sold another work, "Poppy," for
$110,000.
Hammer had only two paintings in his private Los Angeles quarters: a Chen
portrait of a woman cellist in his private reception room and a Peter Paul
Rubens in his private office. "You are a Rubens," Chen remembers the oil
baron telling him. Just before he died in 1989, Hammer asked Chen to paint
his portrait; it now hangs at the entrance to the Armand Hammer Museum of
Art in Los Angeles.
Since Chen left China, collectors and museums have bought about 400 of his
works, including those from six sellout one-man shows at the Hammer Gal-
leries; many have been exhibited in museums such as the Fuji in Tokyo, which
has 20 works, and the Corcoran Gallery and the Smithsonian in Washington.
Among collectors who own a Chen is former Secretary of State Henry Kiss-
inger. Prices now range from about $15,000 to $80,000.
Chen's wife eventually joined him in the United States, but the marriage
ended in divorce. Their 17-year-old son attends private school in Mas-
sachusetts.
Chen works at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week. "No vacation, except
to visit places that inspire me for art, like Venice," he says. "Venice
felt so familiar, it's like Suzhou."
Another source of ideas is the cable TV music channel MTV. "I get ideas from
the videos, about how to arrange groups of people, how to frame them," he
says.
He shuns discussing his wealth, except to say that he uses it for his work.
"I want to use my money to improve my art, not for any other kind of busi-
ness," Chen says, adding that he pays the best models to pose for him, in-
cluding some from the famed Ford agency.
"Art is my whole life. I enjoy it. But after I became successful, I always
thought, 'If only my parents were here.' It's sad for me."
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--
Anthony Lee (Time Lord Doctor) (These are my opinions !)
email: ant...@cs.uq.oz.au voice:+(61)-7-3651204 FAX:+(61)-7-3651999
SNAIL: Department Computer Science, University of Qld,
St Lucia, Qld 4072, Australia