ASIA LIFE The Other Asia-Pacific

Sports, culture and the arts are a passion for billions in the Asia-Pacific, and offer unique insights into what makes countries here tick. From the latest cricket match to prize-winning novels and the latest art exhibitions, The Diplomat's bloggers cover it all, giving you a fresh perspective on the region.

Kowloon Walled City: Anarchy and Inspiration in the City of Darkness

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Once looming like a post-apocalyptic fortress from a dystopian future, a self-sustaining city – an infinite urban space – was demolished in Kowloon 20 years ago this month. Kowloon Walled City, or “the city of darkness” as it was known in Cantonese, sprawled across seven acres, was home to 35,000 people (some say 50,000), packed into a few apartment blocks and more than 300 interconnected high-rises.

At its most crowded, Kowloon Walled City was believed to be the most densely populated spot on Earth. Not Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, not Mumbai’s slums, nothing has ever matched Kowloon Walled City’s epic proportions. At its peak, the population density was roughly 3.2 million people per square mile. That’s like cramming the entire population of Texas into Manhattan.

Such extreme conditions have sparked the imaginations of filmmakers (Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme), painters, writers, and even video games (Call of Duty: Black Ops). Many works inspired by the city are embellished with a healthy dose of artistic license, while others are documentary in nature.

The city is shown in the raw in documentary films like visual tour de force Baraka and in the photographs of Greg Girard, who captured images for the book City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. A number of videos from its glory days can be seen here. Some of the more fantastic artistic visions of the infinite urban space can be seen here at the Hong Wrong blog.

Gizmodo quotes at length a passage from William Gibson’s science-fiction novel Idoru, which is representative of the more fantastic end of the spectrum:

“There was a place near an airport, Kowloon, when Hong Kong wasn't China, but there had been a mistake, a long time ago, and that place, very small, many people, it still belonged to China. So there was no law there. An outlaw place. And more and more people crowded in; they built it up, higher. No rules, just building, just people living. Police wouldn't go there. Drugs and whores and gambling. But people living, too. Factories, restaurants. A city. No laws.”

Kowloon-Walled-City-1898It may seem far-fetched, but Gibson was documenting fact more than he was writing fiction, as the city’s history attests.

Kowloon Walled City had its beginnings as an imperial fort in the Sung Dynasty (960-1297), and then much later, in the 19th century, as a Chinese military post. With the advent of British rule in 1898, the site became a no man’s land. It was demolished by Japanese soldiers during World War II, but then began to fill with refugees. A state of lawless limbo prevailed in the burgeoning slum. A more detailed historical account can be seen here.

As Gizmodo notes, there were no plans, architects or construction firms. The makeshift city just grew organically, with rough-and-ready residents patching together improvised infrastructure along the way. Water came from wells and trash was deposited on the roof or simply pitched from windows. So tightly packed was this vertical jungle that many of the city’s labyrinthine alleyways were pitch black even during the day.

The filth and crowded conditions were an ideal breeding ground for all manner of illicit trade – opium, gambling, prostitution – and the community earned a reputation as a den for gangsters, drug fiends and prostitutes. Like a Hong Kong gangster flick, the Triads ran the city throughout some of the 1960s and 1970s. Unlicensed doctors and dentists plied their trade amid the rubble.

KowloonWalledCityAlley2And yet there was light in this city of darkness, and a sense of community, even order, among residents. An informal kindergarten, a resident’s organization to handle disputes and even a mail service took shape. Temples were built within its walls, and factories opened to employ residents.

“Life was poor, but we were very happy," Heung Yin-king told the South China Morning Post. "We had the best times in the first house, even though the rooms were so tiny there wasn't space for a dinner table.”

As concerns about living conditions mounted, officials finally acted in the mid-1980s, evacuating the site and relocating its residents under a HK $2.7 billion plan. The city stood abandoned like a haunted fortress until 1993 when it was razed.

Today, the site is Kowloon Walled City Park, with only a bronze model of the city to remind the visitor of what was once there. But the city has not been forgotten.

"We all had very good relationships in very bad conditions,” Ida Shum told the South China Morning Post. "Even now, many people stay in touch with each other even though some old friends are overseas.”

Shum added, “In the Walled City, the sunshine always followed the rain."

 

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University of Mumbai Beats Cambridge and Brown for Rich Alumni

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More multimillionaires have passed through the hallowed halls of University of Mumbai than the elite University of Cambridge and Brown University, reports the Times of India. According to the report, excluding American universities, the prestigious Indian institution comes in second only to Oxford in its number of mega-rich alumni and is far and away Asia’s most dependable incubator for the wealthy, including Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Gavaskar.

Ranked 18th, the University of Mumbai is the only Indian school to make it into the top 20 schools on the list, thanks to its 372 multimillionaire graduates (whose combined net worth amounts to U.S. $37 billion). The findings come from a report on the world’s Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs) by wealth analyst Wealth-X, which also shows that the 229 UHNWIs have come out of the University of Delhi.

Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific, the University of Sydney produced a solid cadre of the super-rich, with 247 UHNW alums, along with the University of New South Wales (176 UHNW graduates), the National University of Singapore (163 UHNWIs), Tsinghua University (155), Peking University (136), University of Melbourne (123), Monash University (115) and the University of Technology, Sydney (101). Interestingly, Japanese and Korean universities were nowhere to be found in the study.

For those who want to take the self-made path, Mumbai may not be their best bet, however. The report notes that the school has the most UHNW alums who have inherited their fortunes as well as the most graduates who have both inherited their money and gone on to build wealth of their own. Also worth noting, the University of Monash has the highest number of female UHNW alumni of any university outside the United States, at 17 percent of its rich graduates.

The list is dominated by U.S. institutions, with Harvard in first place worldwide with its 2,964 multi-millionaires and a whopping 52 billionaires. Universities in the UK also make a strong showing, where Oxford tops the list with 401 über-rich graduates. The full report can be read here.

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Shinji Kagawa Wins Third Premier League Championship

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It’s not a bad record at all. Shinji Kagawa has played three seasons in the big leagues of Europe and won three league championships. Things are going well for him on a personal level on the field, too.

The Japanese football star headed to Germany where he played for Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2010 and helped the club win successive Bundesliga trophies. Last June, the playmaker headed to an even bigger stage – the Old Trafford home of global giants Manchester United.

On Monday evening UK time, Tuesday morning in Japan, Kagawa lifted the English Premier League trophy in front of 75,000 delighted home fans.

It has been a highly satisfying first season for the former Cerezo Osaka star. He started well in England and finished well. Only a two-month absence at the end of 2012 due to a knee injury clouded the campaign.

Better yet, in recent games Kagawa has been playing in his favored role just behind the striker, a place that has often been reserved for England star Wayne Rooney. Rooney has been forced to play deep in midfield as a result.

“I think Shinji is doing very well for us now,” Manchester United head coach Sir Alex Ferguson said last week. “He has fantastic composure on the ball and always seems to pick the more sensible pass. He was terrific for the first goal [at West Ham], showing the composure to take the player on in a tight area and roll the ball in to Antonio Valencia.”

Ferguson continued, “As far as taking Wayne off on Wednesday, it was simple. He wasn’t playing as well as Shinji and we wanted to get that goal. There have been so many games where Wayne Rooney has been better than most players, but on the night, Shinji was playing so well.”

When United clinched the title with a 3-0 win over Aston Villa, Kagawa offered energy, vision and class to Manchester United’s offense on the attack.

Not only has Kagawa won the big prize in his first season, he has done enough to suggest that next season he will play an even bigger role.

The team’s prize comes just after Kagawa took the individual accolade of becoming the first Asian player to score a hat-trick in the English Premier League.

But Kagawa is not the first Asian to collect a Premier League trophy. Park Ji-sung won four during his seven seasons with the same club, leaving last summer shortly after the arrival of the Japanese star.

It remains to be seen if Kagawa can match Park’s tally, but he’s off to a good start.

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Shamshad Begum: Bollywood Singing Legend Passes Away

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Shamshad Begum, a woman who sang much of the early Hindi film industry’s soundtrack, has died in Mumbai aged 94.

Born on April 14, 1919, in Amritsar, Punjab, Begum made her singing debut on Peshawar Radio in Lahore in December 1947. Begum soon became one of Bollywood’s pioneering “playback singers,” first collaborating with composer Ghulam Haider in a career that spanned three decades. Playback singers provide the musical dimension to Bollywood films through crooning the songs lip-synced by actors and actresses in oftentimes colorful, dramatic scenes.

In her distinctly deep, nasally voice, Begum crooned hits such as “Mere Piya Gaye Rangoon” (in the film Patanga, 1949), “Saiyan Dil Mein Aana Re” (Bahar, 1951), “Leke Pehla Pehla Pyaar” (alongside Mohd Rafi and Asha Bhonsle for the film CID, 1956) and “Kajra Mohabbatwala” (along with Asha Bhonsle in the film Kismat, 1968), among others. Alongside Hindi, she sang tunes in Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil and Punjabi, and also collaborated with legendary producers Naushad, OP Nayyar, S.D. Burman and C. Ramachandra, among others. A great selection of some of her biggest hits can be watched here in videos rounded up by The New York Times.

Begum’s hits have stood the test of time, chosen by wedding emcees and remixed by pop stars like Tanushree Dutta, who put a new spin on Saiyan Dil Mein Aana Re from the film Bahar. Her talent stood out even in her youth.

"When I joined school in Lahore, we used to sing a prayer before our classes,” Begum told film journalist Lata Khubchandani in a past interview. “All of us sang in chorus. One day the principal announced that there was one voice that stood out. It was mine. I was made to stand on a school bench and lead the school prayer after that."

From the late 1960s, the strength of the voice that catapulted her to fame came to be seen as too powerful for the heroines of Hindi cinema. Towards the end of her career, she sang two songs in her commanding voice for male characters dressed in drag.

In 2009, Begum received the Padma Bhushan, India’s highest civilian honor, as well as the O.P. Nayyar award for her contribution to film music.

Following her death, tributes poured in from all quarters, including one from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said, “Ms. Begum was among the most popular singers of the country for over three decades and captured the hearts of music lovers with her enchanting voice and unique tonal rendition.”

Bollywood A-lister Amitabh Bachchan tweeted, "The golden voice of Shamshad Begum, playback singer of great eminence in some of the most historic film songs... now silent... RIP."

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Daft Punk to Premiere New Album In Rural Australia Town, Pop. 2,100

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Daft Punk’s forthcoming album, Random Access Memories, is easily the most anticipated of the year thus far, with excitement spurred in part by the gradual and secret rollout campaign behind it.

So it only seems natural then that the French-duo would choose the global metropolis of Wee Waa, Australia— population roughly 2,000— as the location to first premier the album in its entirely.

The small Australian town, best known for being “the cotton capital of Australia,” hosts the annual agricultural event, Wee Waa Show, where 4,000 lucky people will be present for the public debut of the Robot’s latest album on May 17.The Wee Waa Show bills itself as a"a pet show, showgirl competition, cross cut saw competition, fireworks and much more.”

There’s been a number of theories as to why the group chose Wee Waa (or how they even knew about it) to first play the record. The most plausible is that the town is near the Narrabri Observatory—six 22 meter high satellite dishes, according to The Guardian—which would presumably be incorporated in some way in the “all-purpose stage” Daft Punk has reportedly promised for the event.

Of course, in typical fashion for Daft Punk and this album, the details are only gradually coming out, first appearing on WeeWaa.com, and only later being confirmed by other sources. One outstanding question is what will actually take place at the 79th annual Wee Waa Show. Will Daft Punk themselves be at the event for the audio playback? Could they end up performing it?

Meanwhile, in recent days we have learned more about the album itself. After being teased with snippets of the song at Coachella Music Festival and on Saturday Night Live, the radio edit version of the album’s first single, “Get Lucky”—which features the Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers— was released last week. Spotify duly announced that the new single—the duo’s first in eight years— broke its record for the biggest first day of streams globally, and in the U.S. and UK was streamed more times than any song in a single day.

Having previously been told that Random Access Memories would feature several collaborations, the robots are gradually revealing the identity of those artists by posting videos of the collaborators explaining their experience working with the duo in Paris, where the album was recorded.

The band also did their first English-language interview about the album with Rolling Stone, telling the iconic magazine they have been working on it since 2008 and it finally came together when they ditched electronics and started using live instruments to record it.

At a concert in New York City over the weekend, Pharrell Williams—who in his own video on the duo’s website describes how the robots gave him some sort of holistic medicine to cure his jet lag and he subsequently could not remember even recording the single— performed “Get Lucky” for the first time live. Despite his memory lapse during the recording of the song, he was apparently happy with the final product as he then performed it two more times without stopping, which may seem excessive to anyone who hasn’t heard the incredibly catchy tune.

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Anzac Day Underscores Changes Down Under

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Tomorrow, April 25, is Anzac Day, one of the most significant national holidays on the calendar for Australians and New Zealanders who set aside time to commemorate their war veterans. Commemorative services will be held at dawn, while ex-service men and women will march in afternoon parades through the towns and urban centers of both nations.

The Centennial of the holiday is only two years away on April 25, 2015, at which point a large-scale commemorative event will be held at Gallipoli in modern day Turkey. Some 40,000 Aussies and New Zealanders have expressed interest in attending the occasion, attesting to the power that the holiday still holds for many.

Anzac Day marks the first combat seen by troops from Australia and New Zealand (who came to be known as Anzacs – short for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) in World War I, when they stormed the beaches of Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25, 1915. Their mission: to open the Dardanelles to allied naval forces, with the ultimate goal of capturing Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Resistance from Turkish forces was fierce, however, and the invasion became a protracted eight-month battle that ended in a stalemate. More than 8,000 Australian soldiers and 2,721 New Zealand troops died in the Gallipoli campaign, which claimed a total of 120,000 lives from all sides.

Since fighting in Gallipoli, Australia and New Zealand have been involved in some capacity (whether logistical or combat) in the majority of America’s military conflicts, from World War II and the Korean War to the Vietnam War, both Iraq wars, and the war in Afghanistan where Australia deploys around 1,550 troops annually under Operation SLIPPER.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard recently announced that Australia’s troops will gradually be phased out of Afghanistan, with two-thirds of the nation’s troops set to return by the end of 2013. To date, 39 Australian troops have died and 249 have been wounded in the conflict, which has become deeply unpopular at home.

Meanwhile, just as enthusiasm for war has plummeted, the national identities of Australia and New Zealand – originally forged in part by Anzacs nearly a century ago – are more in flux than ever before. For almost two centuries, settlers in both nations came mainly from the British Isles. Since World War I, however, the nation’s population has quadrupled, with massive waves of immigrants coming from China, India, Italy, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Today, the “average Australian” may be born in Australia, but this reality is changing fast. At present, 26 percent of Aussies are born overseas, while only 54 percent are born to parents who were both born in Australia. This is also mirrored by an uptick in religious diversity, with Australia’s population today being 2.5 percent Buddhist, 2.2 percent Muslim and 1.3 percent Hindu, which is the fastest growing of these minority religions and doubled from 2006 to 2011. Similar trends have taken root in New Zealand.

Amid demographic change and disillusionment with the war in Afghanistan, the relevance of Anzac Day has dwindled for many. In the same way that Memorial Day has become little more than an excuse to hold a BBQ for many Americans, so too has the significance of Anzac Day been lost in translation or fallen by the wayside for many recent immigrants and young Australians (barring those in service).

Nonetheless, the ceremonies will go forward tomorrow and the contributions of veterans cannot be diminished. The holiday’s relevance may have faded for many, but history speaks for itself and demands to be honored.

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U.S. $1 Billion Malabar Fortune: The Search for an Heir Continues

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It reads like a fairy tale: On the Malabar Coast along India’s southwestern shore, the Arakkal and Keyi families have engaged in an ongoing feud since the days of the British Raj.

The Arakkals were the rulers of the realm, in which the Keyis (Persian for “Ship Owner”) amassed a massive fortune through the shipping routes they ran between India and Arabia as part of the English East India Company during the Raj. A condensed version of the Keyi family’s illustrious history can be read here.

Over the centuries, the families attempted to intermarry and ease tensions as the Sultan of Arakkal had become jealous of the Keyis’ good fortune. But such alliances never formed and the rivalry festered.

According to a report in The Telegraph yesterday, these old tensions were roused once again when the Indian government announced it is searching for the rightful heir to U.S. $1 billion as compensation from the government of Saudi Arabia for destroying Mayankutty Keyi’s bungalow in Mecca. The Keyis were among one of three families from India to own properties in Mecca – the others were the Nizams of Hyderabad and the Nawabs of Arcot.

As one of the major Muslim clans of India’s southwestern state of Kerala, many of the Keyis’ friends and family members made the trip to Mecca to perform Hajj. This fact inspired Mayankutty to commission the building of a domicile for family and friends to stay during their pilgrimage.

At the time the Saudis razed the bungalow in 1971, it was valued at U.S. $100 million. Today, its value is an estimated U.S. $1 billion (or 5,000 Crores). There has been talk of rebuilding the Keyi Rubath bungalows, built in 1848 at Haram Sherief near Ka’aba. The Saudi government initially took over the buildings 70 years ago as they expanded the Ka’aba.

Although a member of the Keyi family commissioned the building of the structure, the Arakkals are also attempting to claim the prize. According to a report in The Times of India, some 45 descendants of the ruling family plan to stake a claim, based on the fact that Mayankutty Keyi had married Arakkal Beevi of the matrilineal Arakkal family. The Saudis have been in talks with India about releasing the money since 1988, but have been held back by technicalities until now.

The Kerala state government has appointed Mr. T.O. Sooraj to negotiate between the Ministry of External Affairs and the Saudi government as the search for the rightful heir continues.

“So far we have not found a direct heir of Mayankutty,” Sooraj told The Telegraph.

He added in an interview with the Times of Oman, “We are now collecting as many documents as possible to stake a claim on firm grounds. I will be in touch with the family, the central government, and the Saudi government to pursue the matter. We may have to visit Saudi Arabia for this.”

In other words, the search continues.

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A Second Look at Asia’s Most Innovative Cities

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It’s been a good year so far for Singapore. This month its Changi Airport was awarded the world’s highest accolade for an international flight hub. And just before that, business development consultancy Solidiance declared the “Lion City” to be the Asia-Pacific’s most innovative urban center.

According to Damien Duhamel of Solidiance, Singapore was an easy choice: “Today, Singapore is bold, fast and successful - and Singapore Inc. will follow the same path. Singapore has no other choice; it must adapt, stay opened and lead change if it is to remain relevant in the 21st century.”

Innovation is a tough concept to pin down. People move, demographics shift, industries are created and destroyed, cultures mix to create new ideas. Education, infrastructure and civic society underpin all of these efforts, only to upend the old and dream up the new on an ongoing basis. But these unpredictable variables haven’t stopped think tanks and media from trying to quantify innovation.

According to the Solidiance study, six key indicators were factored into its findings. In no particular order, they include: a skilled talent base, high-caliber education system (knowledge creation), a tech-savvy populace with gadgets and networks to stay connected (technology), a socio-cultural atmosphere that encourages art and freedom of expression (society), governance that facilitates financial freedom (government) and global integration.

In a similar attempt to quantify “innovation,” the Wall Street Journal, Citigroup and the Urban Land Institute, crunched data, engaged heavily on social media and oversaw a contest between 200 cities around the world to see who ended up on top. Their findings, released in March: Medellín, Colombia, is the most innovative city in the world.

Once the stronghold of near mythical drug lord Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel, the city went on to reinvent itself in every respect. It reduced its homicide rate by nearly 80 percent between 1991 and 2010. It built a slew of public facilities (libraries, parks, schools), as well as public transport links from its poorer hillside neighborhoods to downtown via gondolas and a giant escalator shuttle system, purportedly cutting some commute times from a few hours to a few minutes. Essentially, Medellín shows us that innovation is fundamentally about change, which is also the reason that Singapore won its spot in the Asia-Pacific.

Living by the credo of change to one degree or another, Sydney (prized for its global outlook, talented, tech savvy populace and open society), Melbourne (touted for its livability, diversity and talent), Hong Kong (which received kudos for its ease of doing business) and Auckland (livable, tolerant, talented) rounded out the top five. Tokyo ranked a surprisingly low sixth (held back by its lack of openness to outside ideas and its “tolerance for failure,” but placing first in knowledge creation), followed by Seoul, Osaka, Pusan and Taipei.

Further down the list (11th-16th) were Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok from the ASEAN block, Beijing and Shanghai from Mainland China, and Mumbai and New Delhi from the subcontinent. In the cases of China and India, the Asian Century Institute says its cities have “grown by default without proper vision or planning”.

A detailed look at each city’s strengths and weaknesses can be seen here.

Explaining Singapore’s no. 1 ranking, the report reads, “Singapore sits on top of this ranking because it has made dramatic and perpetual improvements for the past 25 years. It looks as if the city somehow lives by the Jack Welch formula: ‘Get better or get beaten’.” The World Bank concurs, placing Singapore first in the world for ease of doing business in 2013.

The study drops names of companies with headquarters in Singapore – Eu Yan Sang, Breadtalk, Hyflux and TWG Tea – as evidence of the city’s “attractive ecosystem for companies”. It also mentions the city-state’s reputation as a cultural melting pot, which it sees as a sign of its openness.

But is a free financial system and smart people all that it takes to innovate? Singapore may have a stellar business ecosystem and is indeed diverse, but some say tolerance lags in the city-state where homosexuality remains illegal and tensions simmer beneath its multi-ethnic surface. Other issues of concern in Singapore’s socio-cultural sphere include worries over privacy infringement online and alleged limitations on academic freedom, brought to the fore by the recent tenure rejection of Dr. Cherian George at Nanyang Technological University.

In the long-term, restricting freedom in some areas may lead to stunted creativity in others. Conversely, in principle at least, societies with the most tolerance and true openness to diversity may unleash the most creativity, contributing to innovation in turn. While it may not perform as strongly in other criteria, Bangkok is king of this realm, ranking first in the society category.

Bangkok is “hard to define and hard to grasp,” its blurb reads in the Solidiance study. “Among our Asia-Pacific city list we believe Bangkok has the most potential to climb in the ranking in the future.” And here is the kicker: “An open mind is a basic requirement to build an innovative ecosystem and Bangkok has proven to be very open.”

Could this be a glimpse of the shape of Asia’s innovation centers to come?

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Divinyls Lead Singer Chrissy Amphlett Dies of Breast Cancer at 53

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Chrissy Amphlett, Australian former lead singer of the rock band Divinyls, passed away yesterday morning in New York where she lived with her husband and former Divinyls drummer Charley Drayton.

"Our beloved Chrissy peacefully made her transition this morning,” read a statement offered by Amphlett’s family. "Christine Joy Amphlett succumbed to the effects of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, diseases she vigorously fought with exceptional bravery and dignity. Chrissy's light burns so very brightly. Hers was a life of passion and creativity; she always lived it to the fullest.”

The singer revealed she was battling the diseases in 2010. ''My family knows, so I thought I might as well come out with it,'' she told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2010. ''I've got songs to sing, I've got stages to perform on. I'm a keep-on-going sort of girl.'' She added, “It's unfair, but life is not fair - even rock stars get breast cancer.”

Amphlett’s no-nonsense attitude and passion drove her to blaze her own path from a young age. Born in Geelong, Victoria, she was the cousin of 1960s pop star “Little Pattie” Thompson and went on to find her voice at an early age. Leaving home as a teenager, Amphlett traveled to England, France and Spain where she lived the bohemian life of a street performer.

Amphlett would later become famous as lead singer of Divinyls – a role she relished and used to great effect, provocatively frolicking on stage in a schoolgirl outfit and torn fishnets. After forming in 1980 and appearing the 1982 film Monkey Grip, the band rose to stardom with hits like Boys in Town, Only Lonely and the 1991 pop phenomenon I Touch Myself, which was Australia’s number one hit and ascended to the top ten charts in both the United States and Britain. After her diagnosis with breast cancer, she expressed her hope that her predicament would remind women to get annual breast examinations.

Divinyls were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 2006, toured in 2007 and then broke up. Just last month, Amphlett was named one of Australia’s top ten singers of all time.

Ian “Molly” Meldrum, Countdown host and friend of Amphlett and Drayton, praised the band and Amphlett’s contributions, saying, “She broke ground for women in Australian music, she was amazing and fearless. Divinyls were an incredible band, they helped open the doors for Australian acts to tour America in the ‘80s.”

But more than anything else, Amphlett distinguished herself with her intense stage presence and originality. “She wasn’t trying to be anyone else,” said music journalist Glen A. Baker, who called her “ferociously larger than life.”

He added, “Pop music had trained us to expect that women in rock were kind of like accessories – pretty things in short skirts and winsome smiles. We didn’t really expect to see anyone who came on like a cavewoman. She was such a mighty singer, but she was innately so rock ‘n’ roll.”

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Blackstone Group Creates $300 Million Scholarship Program for Study in China

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Blackstone Group Chairman Stephen Schwarzman is launching a U.S. $300 million scholarship that will allow foreign students to attend Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, known for grooming many top Chinese officials from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping and, according to Forbes, for its exceedingly beautiful campus, set on a former Qing Dynasty royal garden dotted by imperial courtyards and ponds.

"China's economy is growing at three times the rate of the West, and if that growth continues, China will become the largest economy in the world within the next couple of decades," Schwarzman said prior to the launch of the fund on Sunday.

In the same spirit as the Rhodes Scholarship program launched in 1902 by Cecil J. Rhodes at the University of Oxford – which each year sends 32 American students across the pond to England – the Schwarzman Scholars program will seek to enhance understanding between China and students from the U.S., Europe, South Korea, Japan, India and beyond.

Schwarzman, who ranks no. 163 on the Bloomberg Billionaires list and is worth U.S. $7.3 billion, is pouring U.S. $100 million of his own wealth into the fund and hopes to raise an additional U.S. $200 million via outside sponsorship. He’s already halfway there with vows of support from a number of Western firms involved in China, from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Boeing to Caterpillar and General Electric.

Advisers on the scholarship board include heavy hitting officials like former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, past-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, ex-Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as well as famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

China’s economy has quadrupled in size over the past decade, climbing at an average of 10.6 percent annually in the ten years to 2011, before dipping slightly to 7.8 percent in 2012. Today the People’s Republic is both the second-largest economy and America’s second-largest trading partner. Trade flows between the U.S. and China totaled U.S. $536.2 billion in 2012, with the deficit on the U.S. side hitting U.S. $315 billion. China continues to restrict American makers of automobiles, steel and beef from accessing its 1.3 billion potential consumers.

Meanwhile, many remain concerned over Beijing’s human rights record, its alleged hacking efforts, as well as the ongoing diplomatic rows with its East Asian neighbors over disputed territory and historical grievances. In short, the need for mutual understanding is greater than ever today.

“Disproportionate levels of growth often create global imbalances and tensions, which will need to be addressed in the decades ahead,” Schwarzman said. “For the West, this means developing a far richer and more nuanced understanding of China's social, political and economic context.”

In response to a question over the possibility of restrictions on academic freedom on politically sensitive matters, Schwarzman told Reuters, “There ought to be a robust dialogue expected to occur. To the extent that there's not, that would be an instructive part of a student's education in China.”

For many years now, Chinese students have flocked to the U.S. and other Western countries. This reality was brought to the headlines last week when it was revealed that one of the three victims who died in the tragic Boston bombing was a Chinese graduate student named Lu Lingzi at Boston University. In turn, Lu’s tragic death and the subsequent outpouring of sympathy and grief have unnerved many Chinese students in the U.S..

Chinese students account for the main driving force in international student numbers in the U.S., which hit an astronomical 764,495 in 2011, a 5.7-percent rise over the previous year. Chinese account for 14 percent of international students from anywhere on the globe, according to the Center for China and Globalization and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Many Chinese – 272,000 in 2012 – turn out to become what are known as “sea turtles,” the name given to those who return to China and working for global firms on home turf, where their global perspective from their time as students overseas provides them with an edge.

But, as Schwarzman’s new scholarship suggests, the flow is no longer one way. According to the official website of Tsinghua University, more than 3,530 international students – 1,250 of them graduate students – are enrolled in programs at the prestigious institution for its 2012-2013 academic year. On the national level China hopes to raise the total number of foreign students in its universities to 500,000 by 2020, up from 290,000 in 2011.

As Schwarzman sees it, this increase in trans-Pacific student traffic has only positive things in store for both sides: "A win-win relationship of mutual respect between the West and China is vital, benefiting Asia and the rest of the world, and enhancing economic ties that could lead to a new era of mutual prosperity."

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