China Guide 2008

“Mid-Autumn Festival” which is also known as the “Zhong Qiu Jie” in Chinese, is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. This year it falls on September 25^th.  Mid-Autumn is a time for family members and loved ones to congregate and enjoy the full moon – an auspicious symbol of abundance, harmony and luck. Adults will usually indulge in fragrant mooncakes of many varieties with a good cup of piping hot Chinese tea, while the little ones run around with their brightly-lit lanterns.

“Zhong Qiu Jie” probably began as a harvest festival. The festival was later given a mythological flavour with legends of Chang-E, the beautiful lady in the moon.

According to Chinese legend, the earth once had 10 suns circling over it. One day, all 10 suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. The earth was saved when a strong archer, Hou Yi, succeeded in shooting down 9 of the suns. Yi stole the elixir of life but to save the people from his tyrannical rule, his wife, Chang-E drank it. Thus started the legend of the lady in the moon to whom young Chinese girls would pray at the Mid-Autumn Festival.

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Most Chinese remember being told this romantic tragedy when they were children on Qixi, or the Seventh Night Festival, which falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, which is usually in early August. This year it falls on Sunday, August 19.

If it rains heavily on that night, some elderly Chinese will say it is because Zhinu, or the Weaving Maid, is crying on the day she met her husband Niulang, or the Cowherd, on the Milky Way.

According to the Chinese lore, a cowherd lived with his elder brother and sister-in-law who disliked and abused him, that he was forced to leave home with only an old cow for company. The cow, however, was a former god who had violated imperial rules and was sent to earth in bovine form. One day the cow led the cowherd to a lake where fairies took a bath on earth. Among them was a weaving maid, the most beautiful fairy and a skilled seamstress. The two fell in love at first sight. They ignored Heaven’s strict rules and were soon secretly married. They had a son and a daughter and their happy life was held up as an example for hundreds of years in China. Yet in the eyes of the Jade Emperor, the Supreme Deity in Taoism, marriage between a mortal and fairy was strictly forbidden. He sent the empress to fetch the weaving maid. The cowherd grew desperate when he discovered the weaving maid had been taken back to heaven. Driven by the cowherd’s misery, the cow told him to turn its hide into a pair of shoes after it died. The magic shoes whisked the cowherd, who carried his two children in baskets strung from a shoulder pole, off on a chase after the empress. The pursuit enraged the empress, who took her hairpin and slashed it across the sky creating the Milky Way which separated husband from wife. The cowherd was stopped by the surging river. But all was not lost as magpies, moved by their love and devotion, agreed to let them meet one day (on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month) each year. All the magpies in the world, according to lore, gather on that day to form a bridge spanning the Milky Way so the lovers can reunite. Even the Jade Emperor was touched, and allowed them to meet once a year on the seventh night of the seventh month. (more…)

According to Chinese lunar calendar, June 19th is the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which is a famous traditional festival – Duanwu festival.For thousands of years, Duanwu has been marked by eating Zongzi and racing dragon boats.

The taste of Zongzi, a pyramid-shaped dumpling made of glutinous rice and wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves to give it a special flavor, varies greatly across China. Zongzi is often made of rice mixed with dates in Northern China, while Eastern China people like to stuff Zongzi with pork, ham, chestnuts and other ingredients, making them very rich in flavor.

Duanwu is also known as the Dragon Boat Festival, because dragon boat races are the most popular activity during the festival, especially in Southern China. A dragon boat is shaped like a dragon, and is brightly painted in red, white, yellow and black. Usually, a dragon boat is 20 to 40 meters long, and needs several dozen people to row it. Boatmen row the boat in cadence with the drumbeats, as the captain standing in the bow of the boat waves a small flag to help coordinate the rowing. Before the race gets underway, a solemn ceremony is held to worship the Dragon King.

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China’s cuisine has evolved into one of the great cuisines of the world. For more than 5,000 years, food has played an auspicious role in nearly all aspects of Chinese society from health and medicine to business and celebration and it is no less important today. The overall importance of food in China can’t be understated; upon greeting, Westerners will inquire about your health, the Chinese will ask if you’ve eaten.

Rich in scenic beauty, China’s geography spans a wide spectrum from fertile plains to high mountains. Its climate is also extremely broad in scope, ranging from sub-arctic to subtropical with everything in between. This combination of varied geography, climate and sheer land size produces an extraordinary cornucopia of fruit, vegetables, meats and seafood, and has evolved into one of the most interesting, creative and widely enjoyed cuisines of the world. (more…)

CHINESE PAINTING

Chinese painting originated over 5,000 years ago. Steeped in Chinese history, literature and philosophy, Chinese painting is different from that of the West in its motifs, form and technique.

One basic distinctive feature of Chinese painting is that ideas and motifs are mainly presented in inked lines and dots, rather than color, proportion and perspective.

Chinese paintings are created using brush pens made of a penholder and a pen head. The penholder is usually made of bamboo or wood, while the pen head is made of animal hair – typically wolf or sheep. The brush heads are soft and flexible, and match well with the style of Chinese paintings. Generally, only black ink is used in Chinese paintings and delicate silk and paper are used as the “canvas” in Chinese paintings. (more…)

Over the ages, many religions have entered China and at present, there are five main religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. Each religion has added its own mark to the cultural history of China.

According to recent surveys, China has over 100 million followers of various religions. Buddhism and Taoism has the largest number of followers, though accurate numbers are hard to come by because Buddhism and Taoism has become a blended faith with many following both religions.

NATURE WORSHIP & ANCESTOR WORSHIP

From ancient times, China has been a multi-ethnic country, with a multitude of religions. According archeological evidence between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Chinese first became conscious of religion. It was discovered that bodies were buried with their heads in alignment at the site of the “Upper Caveman” (shāndǐngdòng rén 山顶洞人), unearthed in a mountaintop cave overlooking Zhoukoudian (zhōukǒudiàn 周口店), on the outskirts of Beijing. The bodies were also buried with spindles, arrowheads and finely made decorations. There’s hematite powder scattered around the bodies, which isn’t produced in the local area with the closest source a few hundred of kilometers away. From the archeological evidence, it appears the cavemen attached much importance to burials and archeologists conclude the cavemen believed in the concept of an afterlife, in other words, in the concept of a soul. This is the earliest evidence of a religious belief found in China. (more…)

As early as in the 6th century, Japan had already known of Chinese garden landscaping with Europeans learning of the Chinese style through Marco Polo who visited many Song dynasty gardens in southern China during the Yuan dynasty. In the 17th century, Chinese garden landscaping was introduced to England where it then spread to France and the rest of Europe. In the late 18th century, Chinese garden landscaping had a huge influence on the European Romantic Movement, European landscaping moved away from a stiff aristocratic style to a more natural style found in Chinese gardens.

Western and Eastern garden landscaping bear different forms and styles because of different philosophies and sense of aesthetic beauty. In form, Western landscaping embodies artificial beauty with symmetrical, regular and well-knit layouts. Geometry is ever-present as flowers and plants are pruned upright and square. Chinese garden landscaping doesn’t require symmetry or fixed regulations as plants, trees and buildings are built to a natural form. Whereas Western landscaping theory aims to remedy the defects of nature, Chinese garden landscaping blends plants and buildings into an organic whole and imitates nature by building mountains (rocky outcroppings) with flowing water to present a quality suggestive of poetry or painting. To fully enjoy the beauty of Chinese gardens, it’s important to understand the philosophy implied through the sceneries. (more…)

ARCHEOLOGY & ANCIENT HISTORY

China’s culture is one of the oldest of the world. Legend has it that the three nobles and five emperors (sānhuáng wǔdì 三皇五帝) were the first rulers of China. They’re also considered as the ancestors of the Chinese people. Of these legendary figures, some taught the Chinese to build houses, others how to grow grain. All of them were idealized figures during a time when mankind was first learning how to survive in the world. The most famous two of these eight semi-deities were the emperors Yan and Huang. Today the Chinese often refer to themselves as Yan Huang Zisun (Yánhuáng Zǐsūn 炎黄子孙) – descendants of the Yan and Huang emperors.

Despite a lack of written records in prehistoric China, through rich archaeological finds, it’s possible to build a picture what life was like during this period. Fossils of an ancient humanoid dating back 1.7 million years were found in Yuanmou County in Yunnan Province. The Yuanmou fossils are the earliest trace of homo sapiens in China. Research has shown that during the prehistoric era there were many patches of human inhabitation throughout China. Unearthed jade and pottery show the civilization of that time was technologically advanced. (more…)