Winter Solstice, the 2nd Most Important Day on Chinese Calendar The 24 solar terms in the Chinese calendar are determined by, not a human ruler’s will, but the pulse of Nature – the change of season. Of the 24, winter solstice, the 22nd on the roll, is evidently the first solar term to be established during the Spring and Autumn […]
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For thousands of years, Chinese people speak in hundreds of different dialects but use only one script, Han Characters (汉字), which makes the written communication and culture inheritance possible. The separation of the written and spoken forms of the Chinese language provides a tie that holds the Chinese people together while gives space for localized expressions in daily lives. 8 […]
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The front of the bronze Han mirror. In ancient China, mirrors, that are normally made of bronze, were often viewed as more than just instruments for reflection; they were also artworks, and sometimes sacred objects with supernatural disposition, and for that, they often used as sacrifice articles to detect other worlds. The earliest mirrors in China were said to be […]
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Chinese civilization perhaps is the most literature-oriented in human history, but the dominant writing style in China changes over time. Here is a long-established observation that brilliantly summarizes the evolution of China’s literature scene: 楚骚 汉赋 魏晋骈文 唐诗 宋词 元曲 明代话本 It means that the odes of the Warrior States era, the rhymed essays of the Han Dynasty, the couplet-style essays […]
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Encountering a white bone demon is one of the 81 trials Buddhist monk Xuanzang, of Tang Dynasty, and his disciples would have to face before arriving in the land of enlightenment. Of course, the enlightened land in the west is not India. It is a state of consciousness. After all, a thousand years ago, there was no such a country […]
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In Chinese mythology, epidemics are caused by Five Epidemic Demons with five pairs of evil eyes, all having a human body but the head of a man, a tiger, a horse, a bird or a rooster. According to the Encyclopedia on The Origin of the Mysterious Figures from Confucius, Buddhism and Daoist (三教源流搜神大全), a work compiled during the Ming Dynasty, […]
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About 3,000 years ago during the Shang Dynasty (商朝), there was a military commander named Li Jin (李靖). Li Jing had a son called Nezha (哪吒) and oddly had no bathroom in his big mansion. When Nezha was seven, on an unseasonably hot day in May, the boy told his mother he was going to take a bath in a […]
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Square dance in the neighbourhood open space in the early morning and evening has been very popular in China for more than a decade. A scene from The Wild Goose Lake, a Chinese crime movie nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes early this year. People enjoyed square dance in a semi-developed urban area (城乡结合部) in the outskirts of Wuhan, […]
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Classics of Mountains and Seas (山海经) is a collection of Chinese mythology, geography and medicine compiled about 3,000 to 2,500 years ago. Here are some mythical creatures depicted in the book. A beast with a dragon head and horse body known as the deity of Mt. Zhongshan. COMMENTS FROM MINDS Eric Very interesting how these seem to mirror western myths. […]
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Feng Zikai (1897-1975) was China’s first and one of the best comic artists, as well as a highly accomplished writer, calligrapher, translator and educator in music and painting. His museum in his birthplace Stone Gate Town in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, is China’s only comic museum. Here are some of his comic work. A Sun Rises from the West A green sun […]
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Golden Rooster Awards Festival 2019 took place between November 21 and 23 in China’s beach city Xiamen, Fujian Province Golden Rooster Awards (金鸡奖), created in 1981, is the most prestigious film award in the Chinese language world. While this year’s film festival is the 32nd, it is also the first since it has been upgraded to an annual event. Previously, the […]
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The Climbers is a 2019 Chinese blockbuster adventure film based on the real-life events happened in the mid last century. The film is produced by Shanghai Film Group Corp, starring Wu Jing, the guy who played a pivotal role in securing the success of China’s first sci-fi movie The Wandering Earth. An awesome and hellish looking Mount Everest Mount Everest is […]
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