With its booming economic growth, the Olympics and Tibet (yet again), China is never out of the headlines. And now, the cultural machine has kicked into gear in Britain with China Now, a huge, year-long festival backed by big corporate sponsors and the cultural diplomacy of the People’s Republic and the British government. Given Beijing’s intransigent stance on censorship (witness its recent blacklisting of Tang Wei, the star of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution), there are always concerns that political issues take precedence over artistic integrity whenever Chinese cultural events are promoted in the West.

And what constitutes “Chinese” culture, anyway? Are we to be restricted to officially sanctioned mainland Chinese performers? What follows is a cherry-picking of writers, film-makers, performing and visual artists who are genuinely representative of contemporary Chinese artistic and cultural expression. The list includes those who are banned in China itself - and, indeed, some who are not even from China.

Literature

Two heavyweight Chinese novels arrive in Britain this spring. The first, Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, has won the Man Booker Asian prize and sold 4m official copies in China, with the counterfeit market adding perhaps twice that. An explosive, if sometimes simplistic, mixture of social documentary and action adventure, it recounts the experiences of a young Beijing intellectual who volunteers to live with nomadic Mongol herdsmen in the remote grasslands of northeastern China during the early years of the Cultural Revolution. In this place of harsh beauty, Mongols and wolves have established a complex relationship that works to preserve the delicate ecology of the plains. But the arrival of Han Chinese migrants under Mao’s new agricultural policies spells disaster for this way of life as the novel reaches its crushing conclusion. The blend of large-scale storytelling, intriguing detail and self-questioning discourse makes for a particularly Chinese novel.

A different proposition altogether is Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, who lives in the UK and whose work is banned in China. At once sprawling and intimate, the novel is a record of the Tiananmen protests and the resulting massacre of June 1989. Narrated by a young student, Dai Wei, the novel reconstructs the atmosphere of the fateful period with startling clarity. As the students gather in the square in makeshift tents, falling in love and engaging in earnest discussions, their idealism is already tinged with a dreadful foreboding; Dai Wei himself does not know that in a few days’ time he will be shot in the head and spend the next 10 years in a coma, during which his memories become more real than life itself. Pregnant with brooding introspection, this is certain to be one of the novels of this – or any other – year.

What of the younger generation? Two women stand out: Xiaolu Guo, author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and Yiyun Li, whose outstanding A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the Guardian First Book award. Brought up in a China already in transition, their work is infused with a wry humour and concerned not so much with the restrictions on individual liberty but with the difficulties of cultural change.

Performing Arts

The acclaimed Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan returns to the UK in April with Moon Water, a work that examines Buddhist notions of time and reality through choreography inspired by t’ai chi techniques and set to Bach’s Cello Suites. When China’s cultural identity is becoming more intricately involved with that of other countries, Bahok, the collaboration between the Akram Khan Company and the National Ballet of China, seems especially relevant. A powerful examination of migration and alienation, Bahok returns to the UK in May.

The UK-based Silk String Quartet perform contemporary commissions and modern interpretations of classical pieces on traditional instruments. They will perform 12 concerts in the UK this spring and summer. Amid the dazzling array of Chinese musicians in the western classical canon - Chinese pianists, in particular, are taking the world by storm - it seems curious to shine the spotlight on a guitarist. That the guitar, with its hot-blooded Spanish influences, is such an unChinese choice of instrument makes Xuefei Yang all the more remarkable. Alongside Joaquin Rodrigo and Francisco Tarrega, she plays contemporary arrangements by composers such as Xiaoyong Chen. This year, she will perform across the UK, including the Wigmore Hall in London.

Chinese-language pop has a colossal following in East Asia, but it will be a while before many western listeners learn enough Mandarin to sing along. Those who can are likely to programme their karaoke sets to Wang Leehom, whose stylish fusion of hip-hop, classical Chinese instrumentation and full-on ballads has made him a household name even in non-Chinese-speaking countries. Top off all this with a touch of bling, and you have the essence of contemporary East Asia.

Film

The so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese film-makers led by Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Chen Kaige brought Chinese cinema to the world’s attention in the late 1980s. Charged with reinventing Chinese cinematic tradition, they produced work rich with political undertones, which often brought them into conflict with mainland censors. Today, Zhang has progressed from controversial works such as Raise the Red Lantern to lavish blockbusters such as Hero and House of Flying Daggers, and has been chosen as artistic director of the Olympic Games ceremonies. His early collaborator Chen Kaige has been more successful in making films that retain both the startling visual aesthetic and the sense of loss and confusion that distinguished his epic Farewell, My Concubine, one of the defining films of the Chinese cinema revival. He is at his best pairing intimate personal tragedies with a backdrop of socio-political change; his anticipated biopic of the 20th-century Beijing Opera star Mei Lanfang is due out later this year.

British audiences can sample the most underrated of the triumvirate, Tian Zhuangzhuang, with the ICA screening an extended run of his brilliant The Go Master, set against the Sino-Japanese war, alongside masterpieces such as Springtime in a Small Town, The Horse Thief and the documentary Delamu, highlighting concern for China’s ethnic minorities.

The leading light of what is already being nicknamed the “Sixth” generation of mainland Chinese film-makers is Jia Zhangke. Despite winning the 2006 Golden Lion prize at Venice for Still Life, set in a village being destroyed by the building of the Three Gorges dam, he is still relatively unknown here. Shot in an unflinching documentary style, his work can feel like a conscious rejection of the lush cinematography of the Fifth Generation, but in another way it is an entirely logical – and powerful – evolution of the very Chinese qualities of loss, longing and introspection. At the other end of the mainland film-making spectrum is Feng Xiaogang, whose unashamedly commercial films such as The Banquet and The Assembly(on release now) represent a different aspect of ultra-confident contemporary China.

If we leave aside the (admittedly huge) political issue of Taiwanese independence and concentrate on cultural sensibilities, it is illogical not to include Taiwan in any discussion of Chinese culture. Not only do the Taiwanese film-makers work in the same language and share actors, it is clear the development of mainland cinema owes much to the great Taiwanese names such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Edward Yang and, indeed, Ang Lee. Free from political constraints, they were able to establish a more sophisticated tradition of social commentary. The current star Taiwanese director is the Malaysian-born Tsai Ming-Liang, the darling of art-house cinemas across Europe and one of the leaders of the Chinese avant-garde. His work is full of haunting beauty and uncomfortable social relations; his latest, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, set in a derelict building in Kuala Lumpur, is a stark examination of urban loneliness.

Exhibitions

The V&A’s China Design Now provides insight into a quintessentially 21st-century Chinese attitude: obsession with advancement and technology, and ruthless sweeping away of anything that might seem obsolete or backward. On a more modest scale, the Chinatown Arts Spaceis a valuable initiative based in London, providing support for British East Asian visual and performing artists. It also organises the Five Circles Arts Festival, on now.

The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw is published by HarperPerennial

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