In Paris, in the 1920s, the arts and the city were booming. This was the place to be. Painters, writers, dancers, actors came here from all across Europe, and beyond. By the time the Twenties began, Jean Cocteau had long since established his reputation here. A friend of writers Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Maurice Barrès, he was an artist in many disciplines, at a time when all forms of art were moving into Modernism. At the City Hall currently you can see an exhibition of graphic work both by and inspired by, Jean Cocteau.

Pi Daojian is an art professor at Guangzhou’s South China Normal University. For the exhibition “The Origin of Dao: New Dimensions in Chinese Contemporary Art” he has brought together works by 37 Chinese artists from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas. The exhbition, at the Hong Kong Museum of Art until the middle of August looks at modern Chinese art, and also shows how much of it has its roots in the past.

Writer Xiao Hong was born in Hulan county, Heilongjiang Province, in 1911, and died in Hong Kong in 1942. She had a difficult life, from her childhood on, narrowly escaping being sold into a brothel at one point. She and her husband Duanwu Hongliang came to Hong Kong in 1940. While here she wrote her most successful long novel, “Tales of the Hulan River”. A new multimedia dance production in the series “Footprints of Time – Literary Figures and Their Sojourn in Hong Kong” looks at her life and her time here.

On the night of our broadcast, the Gavino Murgia Trio is giving a free concert at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre. The show is organised by the Italian Cultural Institute and the Consulate General of Italy in Hong Kong. Gavino has been playing the saxophone since he was twelve. He originally comes from Sardinia, and likes to bring the sounds of Sardinian music into his jazz. The trio came to our studio to give us a sample.