Milan – Hot up-and-coming designer Xuzhi Chen has landed his first show in Milan with the support of veteran Giorgio Armani, as China takes its place on the luxury fashion map.

Sweet-faced Xuzhi, 24, who has been making waves in his home country, said showing at the prestigious Teatro Armani was “very stressful but really really exciting, I couldn’t ask for a better opportunity than this!” He is not the only emerging Asian talent debuting in the northern Italian fashion capital: this season has seen Anna Yang present Annakiki and Angel Chen – dubbed the Baby face of China’s fashion boom – show off her eponymous label.

Snagging the Armani theatre slot, though, is a huge boon: it’s a launch-pad which has shot previous new designers to fame.

Xuzhi told AFP on Saturday that Chinese fashion fans – who have boosted profits for established foreign luxury brands and served as a lifeline for many during the economic crisis – were now clamouring for home-grown talent.

“We’ve been economically booming for the past decades and now people are really hungry for creative stories and creations,” he said.

The young designer, who has already made a name for himself with his simple silhouettes and textile and textural innovations, is on a roll after being nominated for the H&M Design Awards in 2015 and the LVMH Prize last year.

He studied at London’s Central Saint Martins, the label – written as Xu Zhi – is London-based and his design team is made up of contacts he made in the British capital, but Xuzhi is very in touch with his Chinese roots.

He is part of what has been dubbed by fashion bible Women’s Wear Daily the “gang of six”, a group of Chinese designers in their twenties who ventured abroad to study – largely in London – before setting up their own brands.

The gang includes Angel Chen, Momo Wang, Xiao Li, and duo Liushu Lei and Yutong Jiang.

“We studied together, I was actually roommate with a few of them in college,” he said.

“It’s really great to have a peer that inspires you and motivates you, and can be there for you and can understand what stress, what difficulties you are going through. It makes it a lot easier!” The gang has shown together in the past and several members, including Xuzhi, will be at Shanghai fashion week in April.

The collection unveiled in Milan took Xuzhi’s skill in twisting and braiding yarns to the next level, creating a feeling of freedom and movement with long fringes swinging from skirt or jacket hems or covering dresses entirely.

“These are actually single yarn strings hand-braided and then stitched on one by one onto a fabric base, so every single piece you see is tailor-made. It takes about a week to do a top or a skirt,” he said.

Colours were midnight blues, silvers, yellows and white. Dresses were sleeveless, jackets and coats were given a rough and ready look with hanging threads, their hems left unstitched.

Braided yarns also appeared on sleeveless tops or trousers and were laid over painted brushstrokes to create the illusion they had been painted on – think the textured surface of an artist’s canvas.

Asked what was next for the Xu Zhi label, the designer gestured at the backstage commotion following his show and said “it’s really difficult to say with this having just happened, my head is everywhere”.

International stardom may seem tantalisingly close, but for the moment another activity tops the to-do list: “Taking my team out for drinks!”

Taipei – For Pan Hsin-hsing the sight and smell of lilies held a particular horror for many years – the pungent flowers decorated the room where his executed father lay before the funeral.

He was just six years old when Pan Mu-chih, a doctor and local politician, was arrested, tortured and killed in a 1947 massacre that was the precursor to years of political purges in Taiwan, known as the “White Terror”.

A last note from his father was scribbled on a cigarette pack given to him by a sympathetic jailer and smuggled out to the family.

“Don’t be sad, I die for the residents of our city. I die with no regret,” it read.

On Tuesday, Pan will speak at a national commemoration for the victims of the crackdown by troops under nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang party governed Taiwan at the time.

On behalf of many who lost loved ones, he will call for long-delayed justice.

Pan’s father was a critic of the KMT and was killed by a firing squad alongside other local politicians in southern Chiayi city, where there were anti-government riots.

Those riots were part of island-wide civilian unrest which started on February 28, 1947, after an inspector beat a woman selling untaxed cigarettes in Taipei.

The immediate crackdown on protesters is estimated to have killed up to 28,000 people.

Pan also lost his 15-year-old brother, who was shot after going out to look for their missing father. The family pretended the young boy had committed suicide for fear of repercussions if they told the truth.

Another of his eight siblings held their dying father in his arms after finding the train station where the execution took place, says Pan, his voice cracking.

The body was brought to their family’s clinic, where he had worked as a doctor, and laid out in the waiting room so people could pay their respects.

Pan says another of his brothers and a sister were jailed for months as “communist spies”, several of his siblings have struggled with depression.

For years, he associated lilies with that terrifying time.

“I remember looking at the lilies and smelling their scent as men who came to pay their condolences got angry that my father was killed, while women wept,” he told AFP. “It was difficult to bear.” .

The massacres of 1947 were a prelude to wider purges of government opponents between 1949 and 1987 under martial law imposed by Chiang and his son, whose KMT fled to Taiwan after it was defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party in a civil war in mainland China.

Official records state around 140,000 people were tried by military courts during the White Terror, with between 3,000 and 8,000 executed. Many believe the actual numbers are higher.

Taiwan’s current government under President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party has promised to investigate the purges.

But with the first report not due for three years, some activists are critical of what they consider lack of progress.

Yeh Hung-ling heads a campaign group seeking justice for victims’ families and has been helping them track down last letters from loved ones. Her group is calling for a new “political archives law” to allow them greater access to restricted files.

Other activists want to see Chiang’s image wiped out – figures of him across Taiwan are defaced each year on the February 28 anniversary.

Pan says Chiang is to blame for his father’s death. He believes the memorial hall in the former leader’s name in Taipei should be renamed, and the statue of Chiang removed.

Some activists have threatened to topple the statue on Tuesday to commemorate the massacre.

A government-funded report in 2006 found Chiang should take responsibility for the 1947 crackdown.

But campaigners say there has been no official recognition of Chiang as the culprit, or his role in the wider purges.

“We demand the truth be clarified and those who were responsible be made accountable, with their names listed in official records and textbooks,” says Yang Chen-long, head of the Memorial Foundation of 228.

When Pan speaks alongside President Tsai on Tuesday, he will renew his call for Chiang’s image to be rubbed from Taiwan’s landscape as a mark of respect for the dead.

Pan was one of the first ever Taiwanese citizens to reveal his family’s experiences during the purges – all discussion of the crackdown was taboo until martial law was lifted in 1987 and Taiwan began its journey to democracy.

After talking of his family’s trauma at a church service around 10 years ago, surrounded by lilies, Pan finally started to lose his phobia of the flower.

“Speaking out helped heal the emotional wound,” he said.

The cigarette pack on which his father wrote his last message is now archived at the National 228 Memorial Museum in Taipei, along with the bloodstained shirt he wore on the day he died.

Pan said the purges should be remembered to prevent another tragedy in Taiwan. “We don’t want revenge,” he told AFP.

SYDNEY – Australia and Indonesia said on Sunday that full military ties between the two countries had been restored, after Indonesia’s military suspended cooperation in January because of “insulting” teaching material found at an Australian base.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made the announcement alongside Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who arrived in Australia on Saturday for his first visit as president.

“President Widodo and I have agreed to full restoration of defence cooperation, training exchanges and activities,” Turnbull said at a news conference in Sydney.

Widodo’s visit to Australia comes less than two months after military ties were suspended, an event that sparked a minor diplomatic spat and led to an apology from Australia’s army chief in February. Military cooperation between the two countries has ranged from joint training and counterterrorism cooperation to border protection.

The “insulting” material suggested that Indonesia’s Papua province should be independent and mocked the nation’s state ideology.

Indonesia and Australia have a history of patchy ties, but both leaders were keen on Sunday to emphasise their commitment to a strong relationship.

“That robust relationship can be established when both countries have respect for each other’s territorial integrity, non-interference into the domestic affairs of each other and the ability to develop a mutually beneficial partnership,” Widodo said.

While the primary focus of the visit was on security and economic issues, including the finalisation of a bilateral free trade deal by the end of the year, talks touched on tourism, cyber security and social links.

Widodo met Australian business leaders on Saturday, telling them that investor confidence in Indonesia was strong and reassuring them that Indonesia was a stable country in which to do business.

Following one-on-one talks, Turnbull said tariffs would be cut for Australian sugar and Indonesian pesticides and herbicides. He also praised changes to the export rules for live Australian cattle.

Widodo told The Australian newspaper this week he would like to see joint patrols with Australia in the South China Sea if they did not further inflame tensions with China.

China – which claims almost the entire sea region – irked Indonesia last year by saying the two countries had “overlapping claims” to waters close to them, an area Indonesia calls the Natuna Sea.

The leaders stopped short of announcing joint patrols on Sunday, but stressed the importance of resolving disputes peacefully and in accordance to international law.

“As maritime nations and trading nations, Australia and Indonesia are natural partners with common interests,” Turnbull said.

Collaboration on counterterrorism, especially the return of foreign fighters from the Syrian and Iraq conflict zone, would continue, Turnbull said.