Can China's contemporary art market survive and even thrive in the global financial crisis?

"Half and Half" from contemporary artist Wang Huaiqing. Base price, 4 million yuan ($585,700). Who will start me off?"

The sudden slump in the Chinese contemporary art scene has many collectors turning to neglected areas like traditional handicrafts, paintings, rare books and manuscripts.

Giuseppe Verdi's Aida is one of the best-known operas. It has an exotic setting, life and death twists of fate, extravagant theatrical set pieces and, of course, Verdi's thunderous choruses and spine-tingling arias that heighten the drama at every turn.

Until the beginning of the 20th century Shanghai's city walls marked the old city, delineated by Sichuan Lu, Henan Lu, Renmin Lu and Zonghua Lu.

At Xi'an's Chenghuang Temple monks are reviving a kind of music that had almost vanished. The ensemble uses instruments that create a clanging, wailing sound that people who lived during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) would recognize.

For a cheese enthusiast like me, my four-day trip to Greece was indeed a feast.

Tan Jianci is a dancer by training. The only scene that required him to dance in Lost, Indulgence posed a challenge: He had to move so badly that no trace of his grace and dexterity remained.

I was taking a bus in Beijing recently when a Chinese woman asked me: "Were you a teacher at Erwai before?" Actually, I was at the famous foreign languages institute between 1991-93, and I thought maybe she could have been one of my students. But she added: "Are you the person who wanted to buy brown sugar?" "Yes," I said hesitantly.

On a high note