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Metro
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review - taking the soul out of Soulslike
A new Soulslike set in China's Ming dynasty borrows from both Dark Souls and Bloodborne, with some interesting madness effects to keep you on your toes. For decades the Chinese video games industry has been focused solely on the PC and its home audience. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but seem to involve the oversaturation of the mobile market, Chinese developers have suddenly begun to embrace console gaming and in terms of technical prowess their output has been exceptional from the start. What's been disappointing though, is how they already seem to have got themselves into a rut, where almost every single high-profile game is a Soulslike, or at least Soulslike adjacent. Starting with Black Myth: Wukong, and now this, there's a dizzying array of very similar looking titles on the horizon, including Phantom Blade Zero, Lost Soul Aside, Tides Of Annihilation, Project Jinyiwei, and more. We guess that means Dark Souls and the rest of FromSoftware's oeuvre is popular in China but while some games, especially Black Myth, do deviate from the formula Wuchang follows it all too closely. It's a competent copy, more so than many we've played over the years, but in terms of gameplay it adds absolutely nothing new. Wuchang is set in what is now Sichuan province during the late Ming dynasty, in the 17th century. But while the game does feature some real historical elements the overall plot involves a supernatural pandemic called the Feathering Disease, which… well, the clue is in the name really. Playing as a female pirate named Bai Wuchang, you start the game with amnesia and your arm covered in feathers. Ordinarily this would mean you're about to turn into a monster but for initially unexplained reasons it grants you access to a number of magical abilities. Dark Souls will be 15 years old next year and while it's had a huge influence on the games industry, there can be no other game that has been copied quite so much while changing so little. If you've at all familiar with the genre you'll know exactly what to expect from Wuchang, in terms of the third person combat, the multiple weapons, the stats that can be influenced by armour and talismans, and the unusually high difficulty. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Wuchang hits every note predictably and accurately but in every way it feels like From Lite. Even the difficultly isn't quite as extreme as the games it's copying, while being uneven enough that you still can't recommend it to newcomers to the genre. Every different weapon has its own related skills, while each of the five weapon types (swords, dual blades, longswords, axes, and spears) has associated discipline skills, which are unlocked from a skill tree and assigned to whichever weapon you want. This is all enjoyably intricate, with discipline skills also determining whether you're able to deflect or parry with a particular weapon. All skills and weapon abilities are powered by something called skyborn might , which by default is gained by performing a perfect dodge. The combat is enjoyable but it's also extremely familiar. The only thing that's surprising about the game is that as well as Dark Souls it steals quite a bit from Bloodborne, including a version of Insight, where if you kill ordinary humans (who, because of the feathers, assume you're about to turn into a monster and attack you on sight) your state of madness increases – while killing monsters decreases it. Your madness level alters the effectiveness of certain skills, while going above 90% means you both take and deal out more damage than usual. Plus, if you die when at maximum madness an evil demon version of yourself appears and is waiting for you when you come back to recover your lost souls red mercury (although because the game is generally less difficult than the Soulslike average you usually only lose about half when you die). The level design is also reminiscent of Bloodborne, since this isn't a true open world game like Elden Ring, and generally that's a compliment. Although while the intricately designed map and unexpected shortcuts are clever the landscapes and art design is never anywhere near as interesting. Wuchang is perfectly fine, but it feels so watered down compared to actual FromSoftware games it's hard to see under what circumstances it could ever be recommended. Especially since the bosses – usually the highlight of any similar game – are so unsatisfying. They often involve a sudden difficulty spike and the later ones have almost no margin for error, while also being irritatingly defensive fighters, forever flitting off out of reach. More Trending The game's best elements are its expansive skill trees and everything related to the madness rating. If it was us, we would've focused more on that and added more of a horror element to the game, but that never seems to have been a consideration. While this is not the worst Soulslike we've ever played we're struggling to think of another one that feels quite so generic. When there are so many other games doing almost exactly the same thing this needed a more substantial selling point than copying from both Dark Souls and Bloodborne. But alas, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers never really takes flight as its own unique experience. In Short: A wearingly competent Soulslike that seems to have no interest in inventing anything of its own and which is nowhere near as refined as FromSoftware's best games. Pros: The combat is perfectly entertaining, with a wide range of weapons and impressively vast skill tree. The madness stat is an interesting feature that should've been expanded on further. Cons: Everything in the game has been done a dozen times before and usually to better effect. Nasty difficulty spikes and simplistic storytelling. Score: 5/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: £44.99*Publisher: 505 GamesDeveloper: LeenzeeRelease Date: 24th July 2025 Age Rating: 16 *available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: 80% of Call Of Duty players more excited for Battlefield 6 than Black Ops 7 MORE: Tales Of The Shire: A The Lord Of The Rings Game review – Animal Crossing with hobbits MORE: Nintendo's next big Switch 2 game is just £50 right now – but only for today
Scroll.in
2 days ago
- General
- Scroll.in
A 16th-century Chinese writer spoke of workplace burnout, creating a design for radical acts of rest
We are in the middle of a global workplace burnout epidemic — aptly named the 'burnout society ' by Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Four centuries ago, late Ming Dynasty scholar-official Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) shifted from state administrative work to xiaopin – brief, personal essays celebrating everyday pleasures like gardening, leisurely excursions and long vigils beside a rare blossom. Today, his Ming Dynasty-era practice resonates with uncanny urgency within our burnout epidemic. Amid the Wanli Emperor's neglect and escalating bureaucratic infighting in Beijing, Yuan turned away from what today we call a 'toxic workplace.' Instead, he found refuge in Jiangnan's landscapes and literary circles. There he exchanged hierarchical pressures, administrative tedium and cut-throat careerism for moments of unhurried attention. Yuan's xiaopin, alongside those of his contemporaries, transformed fleeting sensory moments into radical acts of resilience, suggesting that beauty, not institutions, could outlast empires. The Ming Dynasty: A literary rebellion The late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) was an era of contradictions. While Europe hurtled toward colonialism and scientific rationalism, China's Jiangnan region – the fertile Yangtze Delta in today's Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces – flourished via merchant wealth, global silver trade and a thriving print culture. Bookshops lined city streets like modern cafés. They peddled plays, poetry and xiaopin volumes like Meiyou Pavilion of Arts and Leisure (1630) and Sixteen Xiaopin Masters of the Imperial Ming (1633). The imperial examination system, a civil service written exam – once a path to prestige – had become a bottleneck. Thousands of scholars languished in bureaucratic limbo, channelling their frustrations and exhaustion into xiaopin 's intimate vignettes. In his preface to Meiyou Pavilion, editor Zheng Yuanxun (1603–1644) praised the genre's 'flavour beyond flavour, rhythm beyond rhythm' – a poetic nod to its rich sensory detail and subtle musicality – rejecting moralising orthodox prose by embracing immersive aesthetics. Against neo-Confucianism 's rigid hierarchies, xiaopin elevated the private, the ephemeral and the esthetically oblique: a well-brewed pot of tea, the texture of moss on a garden rock and incense wafting through a study. Wei Shang, professor of Chinese culture at Columbia University, has noted such playful text flourished among late Ming literati disillusioned with the era's constraints. The texts reframed idleness and sensory pleasure as subtle dissent within a status-obsessed society. When doing less becomes radical Long before French poet Charles Baudelaire's flâneur used dandyism and idle promenades to resist the alienating pace of western modernity, Ming literati like Chen Jiru (1558–1639) and Gao Lian (1573–1620) framed idleness as defiance. Drawing on Daoist wu wei (non-action), Gao praised the 'crystal clear retreat' that scrubbed the heart of 'worldly grime' and cultivated 'a tranquil heart and joyful spirit.' For him, human worth lay not in bureaucratic promotions but in savouring tea, listening to crickets or resting against a well-fluffed pillow. Hung-tai Wang, a cultural historian at Academia Sinica in Taipei, identifies xiaopin as a 'leisurely and elegant' aesthetic rooted in nature's rhythms. Chen Jiru, a Ming Dynasty-era painter and essayist, embodied this framework by disallowing transactional logic. In one essay, Chen lauds those who possess 'poetry without words, serenity without sutras, joy without wine.' In other words, he admired those whose lives resonated through prioritizing lived gestures over abstract ideals. In the late Ming's burgeoning urban and commercial milieu, xiaopin turned everyday objects into remedies for social isolation. In the Jiangnan gardens, late Ming essayists saw landscapes infused with emotion. At the time, essayist Wu Congxian called it 'lodging meaning among mountains and rivers:' moonlight turned into icy jade, oar splashes to cosmic echoes. Chen Jiru had study rituals – fingering a bronze cauldron, tapping an inkstone – curating what he termed 'incense for solitude, tea for clarity, stone for refinement.' This cultivation of object-as-presence anticipates American literary scholar Bill Brown's 'thing theory,' where everyday items invite embodied contemplation and challenge the subject-object binary that enables commodification. The Ming Dynasty-era scholar-connoisseur, Wen Zhenheng (1585–1645), turned domestic minutiae into philosophical resistance. His xiaopin framed everyday choices – snowmelt for tea, rooms facing narrow water, a skiff 'like a study adrift' – as rejections of abstraction. Through details like cherries on porcelain or tangerines pickled before ripening, he asserted that value lies in presence, not utility. Wen suggests that exhaustion stems not from labour but from disconnection. The burnout rebellions: ' Tang ping,' 'quiet quitting' Just as xiaopin turned domestic rituals into resistance, today's movements recast the mundane as a mode of defiance. In April 2021, China's tang ping ('lying flat') movement surfaced with a post by former factory worker Luo Huazhong: 'Lying flat is justice.' The message was simple and subversive: work had become intolerable, and opting out was not laziness but resistance. In a backlash against China's '996' work model extolled by tech moguls like Jack Ma, tang ping rejects the sacrifice of dignity and mental health for productivity and casts idleness as a quiet revolt against exploitative norms. In the West, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked similar reckonings. The ' Great Resignation ' saw millions leave unfulfilling jobs. And 'quiet quitting' rejected unpaid overtime and emotional labour. These movements emerged as a soft refusal of hustle culture. As anthropologist David Graeber argues in Bullshit Jobs (2018), the 'moral and spiritual damage' inflicted by meaningless work reflects a profound political failure. Just like the late Ming literati who poured their lives into a state that repaid them with hollow titles and bureaucratic decay, today's workers withdraw from institutions that exploit their labour yet treat them as disposable. Unlike French philosopher Michel de Montaigne's introspective self-examination in his Renaissance-era Essays, xiaopin refuses utility. In doing so, it inverts the contemporary self-help trend critiqued by Byung-Chul Han, which co-opts personal ' healing ' as a form of productivity through neoliberal logic. Xiaopin proposes resistance as an existential shift beyond (self-) optimisation. Its most radical gesture is not to demand change, but to live as if the system's demands are irrelevant. Xiaopin asks: What is progress without presence? Its fragments – on lotus ponds, summer naps, a cat's shadow – prove that resistance need not be loud. Like Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's vision of contemporary literature as 'a space of individual recovery,' the genre shelters us from 'hierarchy and efficiency.' Here, time is not spent but reclaimed. To pause in an age of weaponised ambition is in fact revolt. Tracing a petal's vein, sipping tea until bitterness fades, lying flat as the machinery of productivity grinds on – these are not acts of shirking reality, but defiant gestures against the systems that feed on our exhaustion. They are affirmations of agency: microcosms where we rehearse what it means to belong to ourselves, and thus, to the world. Xiaopin 's revolution awakens in a flicker of attention: a reminder that presence, too, is a language – one that hums beneath the buzz of progress, waiting to be heard. Jason Wang is Postdoctoral Fellow, Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Cosmopolitan
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
I Fought the Law is the heartbreaking Sheridan Smith drama based on a true story
ITV is renowned for producing gripping and sensitively handled dramas based on true stories. I Fought the Law, a new series coming later this year, is one of them. Starring BAFTA-winning actor Sheridan Smith in the leading role, it follows the harrowing story of Ann Ming, a grieving mother who campaigned to change the Double Jeopardy Law after her daughter was murdered. The drama retells Ming's long fight for justice — a 15-year battle that finally led to permanent change in the criminal system — and some closure for her family. Ahead of its release date, let's take a deeper dive into I Fought the Law, from the full plot, the cast, and when viewers can expect it to land on their screens. Currently, there is no release date for the drama. However, we do know it's coming to ITV1 and ITVX later this year. There is a trailer, however, which shows Smith in character as Ming, along with a taste of what's to come. The four-part limited series explores the real-life events of Ann Ming and her family, after her daughter, Julie, was murdered in 1989. After disappearing following a late-night shift at a pizza restaurant in Cleveland, Ming is convinced that her daughter has been killed. 80 days later, Ming tragically discovers Julie's body concealed behind the bath panel in her daughter's home. This is despite police forensics teams failing to find Julie after extensive searches of the property. During the episodes — which are also based on Ming's 2008 book, For the Love of Julie — the grieving mother works tirelessly to change the 800-year-old Double Jeopardy Law. After 15 years of campaigning, Ming finally manages to overturn the law: Having been acquitted following two mistrials, Julie's murderer was previously allowed to walk free. The Double Jeopardy Law meant he couldn't be tried again for the same crime. However, in 2006, the man responsible for killing Julie was finally sentenced to life in prison. Sheridan Smith, who many will recognise from Mrs Biggs, Cilla, and Gavin & Stacey, leads the cast. Below is a full list of cast members and the roles they play: While the show has yet to be released, it will be available to watch on ITV1 and ITVX
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Stitched into position
Embroidery once defined someone's standing in China, writes Moira White. We are all familiar with a range of id badges — our own or others' — from military dog tags to membership cards or security passes of one form or another. Some we carry, others we wear clipped to a pocket, or on a lanyard around our neck. They convey a range of information that might include a name, job title, place of employment, or sometimes a photograph. However, none that I have seen are even remotely as beautiful as the silk rank badges (buzi) that were worn for centuries by Chinese court officials. Ming dynasty clothing regulations in 1391 required court officials to wear decorative textile patches that showed which of the nine civil or military ranks they had attained. Birds were used to indicate the civil ranks, while the military ranks were denoted by a variety of animals. Censors, who conducted special investigations for the emperor and reported on other officials, had their own badge depicting a mythical creature, the xiezhi. The badge tradition continued into the Qing dynasty, with most showing a representation of the universe: waves below a landscape and central creature, above which were the sky and clouds. The rank badges (sometimes called Mandarin squares) were worn as matching pairs on the front and back of ceremonial robes. Most are more or less square in shape. Because the robes had a centre front opening, badges on the back were a single piece, but those on the front had a vertical split down the middle. They don't, of course, include the name of an individual, but we do know that each person who wore one had been granted permission to do so by the emperor. However, he (the officials were all men) had to provide and pay for the badge himself, which is one explanation for the variations that can be seen in the style and composition of the design. The exams for the civil officials were taken after years of study, so we know at least those who had qualified to wear the badges were hard working, intelligent, and focused. Tūhura Otago Museum has recently received five pairs of civil rank badges that were given to the donor's mother in the mid-20th century, through her association with the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Dunedin. We already had a small number in the collection. The de Beers donated a censor's badge in the 1980s, and Maud Brown gave us four single badges in 1973; none of them are military. She and her husband, the Rev Thomas Brown, worked for the London Missionary Society in China for most of the 1910s and 1920s. In all five pairs of this most recent generous donation, the bird looks towards a circular red sun, representing the emperor. At least three of the pairs show a silver pheasant, denoting the fifth civil rank. Identifying the birds can be a bit of a challenge, not only for me, but the long, serrated tail feathers in many embroidered versions of silver pheasants are distinctive. Apparently, this is the species of bird most frequently encountered in collections of rank badges. The other two pairs show what may be a wild goose (the fourth civil rank). While wives of officials had been entitled to wear the badge of their husband's rank for a long time, researchers suggest that in the mid-18th century, a custom developed for the animal in a wife's badge to face in the opposite direction to those in her husband's. The creatures would then face one another when the couple sat side by side. Our recent gift includes two pairs facing to the left (said to have been those worn by men, as civil officials sat on the left of the emperor), and three to the right. In four of these pairs, the bird stands on one foot on a rock or hill, but in the fifth, the bird flies through a sky of stylised clouds. Even among these examples, there are many variations in the details. Some have auspicious symbols, the border patterns differ, and the plants depicted on the sides, for instance, vary greatly and are perhaps something the wearers were allowed to choose for themselves. The size of rank badges reduced over the centuries and for that and other reasons, it seems likely that those which comprise this new gift were made in the later years of the Qing dynasty. The social role of rank badges ceased when the Qing dynasty ended in 1911, but removed from their original context, they remained of appeal to textile collectors for their beauty and interest, and the skill shown in their making. Moira White is curator humanities at Tūhura Otago Museum.
AllAfrica
21-07-2025
- General
- AllAfrica
A man who guarded China's porcelain legacy with silence and grace
Some treasures are made of porcelain; others, of principle. Among all Chinese imperial porcelains, few have stirred the imagination of collectors, scholars and institutions as much as the Chenghua doucai chicken cup. Revered for its delicate form and harmonious palette, this small cup – originally used by the Ming emperor himself – has become a byword for aesthetic perfection. No more than 14 genuine examples are known today. Four reside in Beijing's Palace Museum, two to three in Taipei, one in the British Museum and the rest in private hands. In 2014, a single piece sold for HK$281.24 million (around US$36 million) at Sotheby's, the sale echoing across the global art world like a thunderclap. Yet, rarer still is something beyond even the chicken cup: a pair of Chenghua doucai porcelain cups known as the Three Months of Autumn. They are, unequivocally, the only pair of their kind left in existence. As catalogued by the Palace Museum: Doucai 'Three Months of Autumn' Cup, Ming Chenghua period. Height: 3.9 cm; Rim diameter: 6.9 cm; Foot diameter: 2.6 cm. The form features an everted rim, deep body and narrow foot ring. Inside is undecorated; the exterior shows two scenes of floral rocks and fluttering butterflies, painted in underglaze blue and overglaze enamels – red, yellow and the famed chazi purple, a matte hue unique to the Chenghua period. The name refers to the tranquil seasonal imagery, echoing the poetic notion that autumn spans three months. The doucai technique – literally 'contrasting colors' – was pioneered during the Xuande and Chenghua reigns of the Ming dynasty. It involves first outlining the design in cobalt blue underglaze, firing the porcelain and then applying overglaze enamels to bring life to the motifs. The process demanded exceptional precision, and few kilns in history matched the finesse of Chenghua-period works. Held between fingers, the Three Months of Autumn cups feel as weightless as cicada wings. Press lightly, and one senses the soft contour of the opposite wall. The decoration floats in gentle silence – its butterflies suspended in timeless flight. Experts have called it the summit of Chenghua doucai, the 'supreme masterpiece of Chinese porcelain.' Its value is not measured in gold, but in the confluence of imperial artistry, technical sophistication, and the fragility of history preserved. Nicolas Chow, deputy chairman of Sotheby's Asia, has spoken of such works not as market items, but as cultural phenomena that transcend economics. And yet, this peerless pair of cups owes its survival not to a museum, nor a government, but to one man: a quiet, frugal antique dealer named Sun Yingzhou. Sun Yingzhou in Beijing. Image provided by his granddaughter, Li Run Born in 1896 in Hebei Province, Sun arrived in Beijing at age 14 to seek his fortune. He apprenticed in a furniture shop, then joined two respected antique firms – Tongchun Yong and Baoju Zhai – where he learned the arts of appraisal, accounting and, more importantly, discernment. After over a decade of study, he opened his own store, Dunhua Zhai, on Dongsi South Street, specializing in Ming and Qing porcelains. Though wealthy, Sun remained humble in every aspect of life. His gloves were sewn by his wife from worn socks. His family ate meat only once a week. He adored Hebei bangzi opera but refused to buy proper seats – always opting for the cheapest tickets on the stairs. A theater manager once asked him, half in jest, why a man of such means wouldn't buy a better view. Sun replied, with a smile, 'As long as I can hear the voice, I'm satisfied.' Sometime in the 1930s, Sun was offered a pair of Three Months of Autumn cups in exchange for forty gold bars. At the time, that sum could have purchased five grand courtyard houses in the center of Beijing. He did not hesitate. He acquired the cups – and then locked them away. For decades, even his own family never saw them. It wasn't until the eve of his donation, in 1956, that he placed them on the table in the family's main hall and quietly let his children view what he had kept hidden for decades. The story behind the cups is as poetic as their brushwork. Legend has it that Emperor Chenghua, made timid and melancholic by years of palace conflict, found emotional refuge in his senior consort, Lady Wan – his elder by 17 years. She shielded him as both protector and companion. For her, he commissioned these cups at the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen. They were delicate and introspective – an autumn garden captured in porcelain, both intimate and eternal. Fifty years later, during the reign of the Ming Jiajing emperor, the cups were already considered legendary. They embodied the highest aspirations of Jingdezhen's imperial kilns – technical perfection united with lyrical sensitivity. In 1956, Beijing's then-mayor Peng Zhen, who was asking prominent collectors to support the young republic through cultural donations, personally visited Sun. Sun agreed, again without hesitation. He donated 3,940 relics – 2,700 of them porcelain – including 25 first-tier national treasures. It took the Palace Museum over 45 days to catalogue the collection. Twenty-five trucks were dispatched to transport the trove. It remains one of the most generous private donations in China's modern history. The Qing Dynasty Qianlong Famille-Rose Vase with Lotus and Eight Auspicious Symbols in Branching Design, a national first-class cultural relic donated by Sun Yingzhou to the Palace Museum Beijing. Image courtesy of the Palace Museum Zhang Hongwei, president of the Forbidden City Publishing House, once remarked with emotion that Sun Yingzhou had made the most outstanding contribution in donating porcelain to the Palace Museum. A Qing Dynasty Qianlong Teapot with Green Ground and Famille-Rose Lotus Scroll Pattern, a National First-Class Cultural Relic Donated to the Palace Museum by Sun Yingzhou. Image courtesy of the Palace Museum The Three Months of Autumn cups now rest quietly in the Palace Museum, among its most venerated holdings. But Sun's contribution went beyond objects. He was a mentor, too. One of his early apprentices was a young man named Geng Baochang, who later would become one of China's foremost porcelain scholars. Geng, forever grateful, often repeated the Chinese adage: 'A teacher for one day, a father for life.' That phrase, imbued with Confucian reverence, still echoes in the ceramic halls of Beijing. China's leading antique ceramic authentication expert Geng Baochang with Sun Yingzhou's granddaughter Li Run – image provided by Li Run Sun's descendants carry on his legacy. His son, Sun Hongqi, became a noted appraiser. His daughter, Sun Wendong, pursued a life in education. His granddaughter, Li Run, now serves in a leadership role within the Computing Power Network Committee of the China Information Association. The Palace Museum is even planning to replicate certain pieces from the Sun Collection to allow students and scholars access to these once-hiddentreasures. Sun Yingzhou lived a philosophy rare in any age: wealth with restraint, collection for the nation, and legacy without vanity. He saw in porcelain not profit but dignity – a reflection of civilization itself. The Three Months of Autumn cups were not ornaments; they were soul. In a world now dominated by spectacle, Sun's life remains a quiet rebuke: no press, no pride, only principle. He recognized something few ever truly grasp: When beauty meets humility, history survives. He deserves not only to be remembered, but to be revered – as a man who, in the gentle twilight of time, held civilization in his hands and gave it back with grace. Jeffrey Sze is chairman of Habsburg Asia (partially owned by the Habsburg family) and general partner of both Archduke United Limited Partnership Fund and Asia Empower LPF. He specializes in high-end art transactions and in real-world asset tokenization transactions using blockchain technology. In 2017, he secured a cryptocurrency exchange license in Switzerland.
