*Zhang Xiaogang has been replaced as #1: based on sales from July 2008 through June 2009, Zeng Fanzhi is now the highest-selling contemporary Chinese artist.

*The director of the Princeton University Art Museum argues for the critical role the university museum plays in the university.

*The first European preview of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale took place in London.

*Asian Art in London runs 29 October – 7 November, confirming London’s role as the capital of the Chinese art trade. But the British aren’t the ones buying Chinese art.

*Web addresses can now include Chinese characters: internet regulator Icann approved web addresses in multiple languages.

*The CCTV tower, burned in February by an unlicensed New Year’s fireworks display organized by CCTV itself, has officially been approved for reconstruction.

*Secrets of the Forbidden City opened at Casa dei Carraresi and runs through 9 May 2010. It includes a special section on Matteo Ricci at the Ming Court, with objects and documents from Rome and Ricci’s hometown of Macerata to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Ricci’s 1610 death in Beijing.

*Hong Kong and Singapore are battling it out for the title of Asia’s regional arts hub.

*The new “it” restaurant in my Chinese hometown of Beijing is Capital M, the new Beijing venture by Michelle Garnaut’s M Restaurant Group. Recent local reviews are very positive, and although the New York Times is reserving judgment for the moment, they can’t deny the steady flow of visitors. Located in the newly-restored Qianmen Dajie area, Capital M would be a great place to end up after a long afternoon wandering the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

*My panel was accepted at AAS! “Picturing the Foreign: Images of East and West in Visual and Literary Culture from 1400 to Present” will run on Sunday 28 March from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m.

*Souren Melikian’s analysis of last week’s art auction successes chalks everything up to new Chinese buyers who aren’t bothered by the usual aesthetic concerns and period stigmas.

*chinaSMACK posted about the coiffures designed to celebrate National Day (国庆节) on October 1. The Great Hall of the People never looked so good.

*Sinosplice caught sight of a brilliant bit of signage.

*An unprecedented double whammy: Beijing has loaned artifacts to Taiwan for the first time since 1949, and Emperor Yongzheng (r. 1723-1735)  will finally get a decent dedicated exhibition.

Yongzheng is rather an enigma: his is overshadowed as a ruler by both his father and his son, reigned amid suspicion and fear, and died in mysterious circumstances. But he loved art, and certainly laid the foundation for his heir’s art patronage. From the portrait below, you can also see he had an eccentric sense of humor and didn’t take himself too seriously in private. This quirkiness seen in his art, which so blatantly contradicts his persona as a ruler, is what keeps me awake at night. And another book idea is born…

*It was a great week to buy and sell Chinese art in New York! Sotheby’s sold $15.5m, but Christie’s topped that with total Chinese sales of $23.9m. The most surprising result was the eighteenth-century imperial desk set estimated at $30,000 that sold for more than $1.4m. But despite all the good news, the Wall Street Journal still called the sales “pared-down.”

*Danwei reported on an illustrated article in fashion magazine 1626 that mix text and image to simultaneously mock and clarify Chinese mispronunciations of global fashion brands.

*RedBox Review is “China. Art. Current. Concise.” If you don’t already read it, you’re missing out on thoughtful, well-written posts about the latest Chinese contemporary art from a Beijing perspective.

*ChinaLuxCultureBiz commented on the rising numbers of Chinese graduates pursuing careers in arts administration. According to the original article, the young female arts administrator who was interviewed advised students to develop “strong background knowledge” for success in the field. But notably absent was any discussion of studying art history, because the field does not really exist in China.

*Did you know that the creator of the pop culture icon known as the Twitter “fail whale” is Shanghai-born artist and designer Yiying Lu?