Alexandra A. Seno

Chinese bidders are offering record sums at international auctions—but sellers complain that getting payment is an imperial pain.

In his latest film, "Under the Hawthorn Tree," Chinese director Zhang Yimou explores a story of young love in 1970s rural China. The movie, which opened the prestigious Pusan International Film Festival last week, features fresh-faced actors with no box-office track record.

Women around the globe are thriving in some of the most dynamic up-and-coming art scenes. They're even achieving widespread success in a country not exactly known for women's rights: Pakistan.

Long tear-shaped white forms—representing bitter gourds commonly used in Chinese cuisine—stand out against a background of impassioned dark-green brushstrokes. The late Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong called his 1998 work "Bitter Melon Homestead," and wrote: "This is blood. This is destiny … Bitter melons are not so bitter, since … I have fully tasted the bitterest of the bitterest."

As a director, Feng has become a strong draw on his own—an anomaly in Chinese entertainment, where movie stars usually make or break a film. Since his 1994 debut film, "Gone Forever With My Love", he has made a dozen movies, each one shattering a record in China.

In Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul tells the story of a man dying of kidney failure who is visited by the ghosts of his dead wife and long-lost son.

A decade ago, just a handful of awards conferred prestige on artists: the Turner Prize (for British art), the MacArthur (for creative genius in the U.S.), and the Archibald (for portraiture in Australia).

Dr. Margaret Chan is a veteran in the -infectious-disease wars. As Hong Kong's director of health, she faced down an avian-flu outbreak in 1997 and SARS in 2003.

Just in time to help beat back the global financial blues, style trendsetters are serving up some of the brightest ideas seen in years. At the recent New York Fashion Week, Marc Jacobs said, "What?

Nervy collectors can find plenty of great deals on fresh, top-quality works, contemporary as well as classic.

Filmmaker Chen Kaige uses opera again to help explain Chinese society.

Chinese officials detain some shipments of a new book containing controversial images.

In the flagging media industry, only lifestyle magazines show signs of life.

Long champions of public artworks, top luxury brands are beginning to develop their own exhibits.

Asians are thinking hard about how to lure visitors from the gulf.

Luxury hotels are cropping up in such remote locales as Azerbaijan and Inner Mongolia.

Like Meryl Streep, the Chinese-American actress Joan Chen keeps getting better roles as she ages.

After a health scare, exiled Chinese artist Gao Xingjian returns to the public eye with new works.

Asia's elite have fueled the growth of Western high-end brands. Now, they are creating their own.

Classical music is making money again, thanks largely to online downloads. It's a great example of how the 'long tail' theory is changing an industry.

Classical music is making money again, thanks largely to online downloads. It's a great example of how the 'long tail' theory is changing an industry.

China's sizzling art market has a new darling: patriotic works that mark the founding of the People's Republic.

The new oil may be water. According to Global Water Intelligence, a U.K. consultancy, by December total assets under management in water funds could hit a record $20 billion this year, a 53 percent increase from 12 months earlier.

Jaycee Chan was filled with apprehension. He was in a hotel room trying to film a love scene for his new movie, "The Drummer," and it wasn't going smoothly. "'Wah, with 50 people staring, how can I do the job right?' " he recalls thinking.

Digital downloads over the Internet are helping purveyors of classical music stage an encore.

Even among the stuffy bureaucrats in Beijing, the Song dynasty ink-on-silk painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" has an affectionate nickname: "China's Mona Lisa." Though it's a landscape, not a portrait, "Qingming" has a mysterious allure that has captivated the popular imagination and spawned debate about its hidden meaning, much like da Vinci's fabled work.

William Chang Suk-ping is a man of few words. The Hong Kong film-industry icon rarely gives interviews and is not keen on talking theory. But his images say plenty.

For some creative minds, climate change represents not impending gloom but opportunity—a chance to imagine a world reshaped by warming, to rethink the way they work by using green methods and materials.

Commodities Are So Hot, Stocks And Bonds Could Suffer.

This winter the region around Yanji, on the Chinese border with North Korea, had a predictable ebb and flow: desperate North Korean refugees escaped into China; cash-flush Chinese crossed into North Korea to gamble.