Compiled by C.ARUNO, FAZLEENA AZIZ and R. ARAVINTHAN
MALAYSIAN singer Jess Lee Kar Wei (pic) continues to make waves in the Chinese reality singing competition Singer, clinching second place in the latest episode, up from third the week before, China Press reported.
Lee, 37, made the bold decision to perform Guang Liang, one of the theme songs in the 2021 documentary The Forbidden City.
A tragic ballad about the fall of China’s Ming Dynasty, the song requires vocal techniques unique to Peking opera.
To perfect her rendition of the song, Lee stayed in Changsha city just so she could study Peking opera performers.
Lee explained that she chose the song due to her love for folk music.
“They celebrate life and praise its beauty. Folk music is sung with a smile. It’s a transmission of both culture and energy.”
She said her vocal coach was trained in China and brought traditional Chinese culture to Malaysia.
“She was the one who recommended that I sing Guang Liang.”
Lee’s gamble paid off as she was given the second highest marks among all the contestants last week.
This means Lee will remain on the show for another week where she will compete for a place in the grand finale.
> Archaeologists studying the ancient terracotta warriors in China’s Shanxi province discovered fingerprints belonging to children on the statues, challenging the long-held belief that only adult males were hired as artisans, Sin Chew Daily reported.
The team of researchers documented some 100 fingerprints on the terracotta warriors left inside the mausoleum belonging to Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, more than 2,200 years ago.
The archaeologists used information from police fingerprint databases and combined them with skeletal archaeology to infer the gender of a fingerprint with accuracy exceeding 90%.
While most of the fingerprints belonged to adult male artisans, three were believed to come from minors around 16 years old.
However, experts are debating if the fingerprints were left there deliberately or as a signature by an artisan to indicate that the statue had passed quality control.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
