China Cultural Chronicles May 30, 2012
- Pregnancy 1/17
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Love, unquestioned. The way it is meant to be.
Our 5th God-child is now only a week or so away. Can't wait to meet her/him in person!!!
Yesterday our oldest friends in Shanghai, Rob from England and Chicks from Shanghai, visited us to have some pre-birth photos taken so one day the little one will have a full record of where s/he comes from.
We had loads of fun taking these, and it was an absolute honour to do this for them.
Rob is an irreverent clown by nature and I guess that is why Chicks fell for him. It was definitely NOT for his looks ;-)). I think their personalities shine through in these photos.
Thanks for the trust and for the opportunity, guys! I hope Little X will one day see these and in them, see the love you had for her/him even before s/he arrived. - Pregnancy 2/17
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This is where I am happy.
Our 5th God-child is now only a week or so away. Can't wait to meet her/him in person!!!
Yesterday our oldest friends in Shanghai, Rob from England and Chicks from Shanghai, visited us to have some pre-birth photos taken so one day the little one will have a full record of where s/he comes from.
We had loads of fun taking these, and it was an absolute honour to do this for them.
Rob is an irreverent clown by nature and I guess that is why Chicks fell for him. It was definitely NOT for his looks ;-)). I think their personalities shine through in these photos.
Thanks for the trust and for the opportunity, guys! I hope Little X will one day see these and in them, see the love you had for her/him even before s/he arrived. - Snapshots of Sagya Dawa Festival
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下载安装Flash播放器A Tibetan is having a rest during his ritual walks. [Photo/ China Tibet Online]
People of the Tibet Autonomous Region have started celebrating the most important religious festival to them since May 21.
The Sagya Dawa Festival, which starts on the First Day of the Fourth Month of the Tibetan Calendar and falls on May 21 this year, is celebrated by Tibetan Buddhists to mark the birth and the attainment of nirvana of Sakyamuni till June 4.
- Glimpse at compound culture in Shanxi
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下载安装Flash播放器[chinapic.people.com.cn]
The unrivaled compound culture in Shanxi Province has been known throughout the world. The ancient local-style dwelling houses of Shanxi were quadrangle dwellings. They have rational layout and magnificent structures with unique brick carving, wood carving and stone sculptures. Among all the compounds in Shanxi, Chang Family Compound, as one of Shanxi's several wealthy merchant's manors, is representative.
Chang Family Compound is the private mansion of Chang family. The constructing scale of Chang Family Compound is the first of its kinds in Shanxi province.
The tall gateway faces the east, surrounded by a river outside, the white stone arch bridge set up at the entrance of the gate. A flagstone against the gate is stretching from east to west. The repaired houses rank in rows. A 100-acres garden corresponds with the houses.
In every courtyard of Chang's Compound, you are provided with the chance to enjoy brick, wood and stone sculptures. The inscriptions on these sculptures are verses, adages or patterns of flowers like plums, orchids and chrysanthemum. These sculptures are considered the most elaborate examples of the Qing Dynasty's building art.
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"Year of the Dragon" commemorated in Art at the Capital Museum, Beijing
2199- Trip to Nantong City in Jiangsu
Nantong City is on the north bank of the Yangtze River, separated from Shanghai by the Yangtze River. It's a wise decision to stop by there when visiting Shanghai. Nantong is a small city with many cultural treasures. Based on the traditions of their ancestors, Nantong people continue to set up museums around the downtown area, to date there are 22, including a kite and abacus one. Best of all, they all offer free admission. Qingnian Zhong Road is a perfect destination for eating delicacies. It is a street filled with tea houses and eateries. Clams are the most popular seafood in Nantong, clever locals whip up all kinds of yummy dishes with them. During the summer time, tourists are invited to pick clams off the beach themselves, making the meal all the more rewarding. [Sohu.com]
- Romantic trip to Sanya
Situated on the southern tip of Hainan Province, Sanya is the southernmost city on the island. Featuring blue sky, beautiful beaches and clear water, Sanya is perhaps the most famous coastal city in China. The climate is hot in summer but warm in the three other seasons. When other cities are shivering in this month, a stroll along the coastline and breathing the fresh air will provide you with a warm, comfortable holiday. [Souhu.com]
- Travels to share
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下载安装Flash播放器Ardent Couchsurfers Magda and Mariusz Majewski love to travel - they didn't even stay home for their wedding, which was in Fiji. Provided to China Daily
More than 200 social travelers gathered in Beijing's Olympic Forest Park for a picnic last month. The Majewskis have organized dozens of meet-ups for people interested in Couchsurfing, especially for families who want to travel and meet locals wherever they go.
A Polish couple brings a social network for travelers together for a springtime picnic in Beijing. Nathan Place grabs some lunch and checks it out.
As I stepped out of the Olympic Forest Park subway station, I realized the crowd was already there. It was an almost blindingly sunny afternoon, and a motley crew of puzzled but cheerful-looking people - about half Chinese, half waiguoren - was beginning to gather outside Exit A, filling the air with questions.
"Are you here for the Couchsurfing thing?" "Do you know if the organizers are here yet?" "Where are the organizers?" "Are you one of the organizers?" and "Zheshi nayige Couchsurfing huodong ma?"
It was Saturday, and all of us had read the same e-mail, one way or another, from Magda and Mariusz Majewski, a Polish Couchsurfing couple. In the past seven days, they had been to seven different cities, and here in Beijing, their third-to-last stop, they were hosting a picnic in the park for Couchsurfers. The couple just hadn't showed up yet.
I was one of those who wanted to learn. I did not have an account on couchsurfing.org, the Facebook-like website for Couchsurfers, and I had never "surfed" or "hosted" in the Couchsurfing sense. In fact, I still wasn't completely sure what these terms meant - but I soon found out.
To "surf" a couch is to stay at someone else's home, for free, while traveling in a foreign place. It doesn't necessarily mean sleeping on the couch, or even sleeping at all. As the blurb on the back of Mariusz's card says, "Stays can be as short as a cup of coffee or a few months or more."
But the key to the whole experience is that the host and the surfer are not friends or relatives; their only connection is that they are both registered members of couchsurfing.org. It's the element of trust between two strangers that makes Couchsurfing special.
I could see that trust in the faces around me. Almost none of us knew each other, but there was warmth and the crowd was easy-going. Total strangers were talking and meeting each other; young Chinese people were practicing their English; there was even a Belgian couple happily seizing an opportunity to speak French with a Chinese student who spoke it fluently.
The atmosphere was overwhelmingly friendly, even though hardly any of the people in it were friends.
Eventually we meandered our way into the park and found a beautiful spot by the lake. We sat down in groups of five or six people, each with its own picnic blanket, food, wine and other supplies. Each group was a kind of microcosm of the Couchsurfing slogan, "the world is smaller than you think".
In my group alone, there were people from China, the United States, Russia, France and Benin.
Finally, Magda and Mariusz showed up with their two adorable children, Max, 4, and Marta, 2. When they weren't too busy, I asked them a few questions about Couchsurfing.
They were the right people to ask. The two of them are committed devotees of the Couchsurfing lifestyle. They've owned a joint Couchsurfing account for five years, they're the designated Couchsurfing Family Ambassadors in Warsaw, and Mariusz's profile boasts that he's been to all 194 countries in the world.
So why do they Couchsurf? "It's a way to travel besides just watching the four white walls of a hotel room," Mariusz said. "Instead, you can see how (local) people live."
"Couchsurfing is not just about sharing couches," added Magda. "It's also about meeting people." Many members of the network are singles and couples, but they have found many families who like the idea, too.
But do Chinese people do it? I was impressed by the number of Chinese attendees, but almost every one of them I talked to said they were just there to enjoy the weather, make friends, and practice their English.
One man, whose English name was "Skip," told me he had never Couchsurfed either in or outside of China, but had used his membership on the Couchsurfing website to join outdoor activities with foreigners, such as camping on the Great Wall.
If Chinese people don't "surf" much, they seem to enjoy being hosts. In Beijing alone, 2,172 people offer their homes to Couchsurfers on the website. Meanwhile, it seemed like everyone at the picnic had a story about how incredibly hospitable a Chinese host had been to them.
Olga Komarevtseva, from Russia told me how curious her hosts had been about Russian culture, while Mariusz told me about the time one host drove out at 11:30 pm to pick him and his family up from the airport.
Eventually the sun started going down, and the crowd began to thin out. A group of friends I had met - hailing from Germany, Russia, Latvia, India and Japan, among other places - was going to Wangfujing to try the scorpions, and they invited me along.
As I left with them, I gradually realized they were not old friends at all, but had met each other mostly that day at the picnic. I spent the rest of the day doing exactly what Couchsurfing is all about: wandering in a foreign place with friendly strangers.
- Blue velvet
- 119b.365 - Fish Market
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Visiting family in Hong Kong meant that we would have lots of family dinners. On this day, we set out for the fish market where my aunties loaded up on fish, crabs, lobsters, clams, and shrimp. What I didn't know was that these would be delivered directly to the restaurant where they would cook and serve us. Talk about fresh seafood!
- 117b.365 - Prayer Beads
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- 117a.365 - Visiting Tian Tan Buddha
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The rain continued but it didn't stop us from hitting the various tourist attractions, including a hanging tram ride up to see the Tian Tan Buddha in Ngong Ping, Lantau Island.
One of my first realizations on this trip was that I was not going to take the kind of pictures I wanted to with my two young children in tow. That generally meant I only had one hand (if any) to hang on to my camera with whatever lens happened to be on it. Eventually I figured out how to use my DSLR one-handed but here's one of the first pictures I captured with my Canon Powershot. - _06P2848_02s
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- _06P2649_02s
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- Gyangdrag Gonpa རྒྱང་ དྲག་ དགོན་པ་ 5010m, Tibet
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Like to see the pictures as LARGE as your screen? Just click on this Slideshow : www.flickr.com/photos/reurinkjan/sets/72157627765541022/s...
Overlooking the vast Barka plain in the background the Himalaya mountain range and lake Langa tso ལག་ངར་མཚོ་ ( Rakshas Tal) , Langa tso is called the `Lake of the Demon`or Lake of Poisened Water`. The distance of the lake is some 20 km away, and the snow peaks of the Himalaya some 90 km away from this temple.
The inner circumambulation (nangkor ནང་ཀོར་ ) route (Kailash); Gyangdrag Gonpa and Mount Yelakzung.
This Drigung Kagyu monastery in the central approach valley of Mount Kailash was originally founded some 800 years ago by the Drigung retreat administrator Drubtob Guya Gangpa, ( totally destroyed during the Cultural Revolution) and has been rebuilt since 1983. It is said to be the actual place where the founding master of the Bon tradition, Shenrab Miwoche, stayed when he came to Tibet several thousand years ago and imparted the first Bon rituals relating to the pacification of the spirits who control mountains and environment. The ruins of the Drigung hermitage of Selung (4940 m) lie beyond Gyangdrak.
www.footprinttravelguides.com/c/2848/tibet/&Action=pr... - Gyangdrag Gonpa རྒྱང་ དྲག་ དགོན་པ་ 5010m, Tibet
reurinkjan has added a photo to the pool:
Like to see the pictures as LARGE as your screen? Just click on this Slideshow : www.flickr.com/photos/reurinkjan/sets/72157627765541022/s...
Overlooking the vast Barka plain in the background the Himalaya mountain range and lake Langa tso ལག་ངར་མཚོ་ ( Rakshas Tal) , Langa tso is called the `Lake of the Demon`or Lake of Poisened Water`. The distance of the lake is some 20 km away, and the snow peaks of the Himalaya some 90 km away from this temple.
The inner circumambulation (nangkor ནང་ཀོར་ ) route (Kailash); Gyangdrag Gonpa and Mount Yelakzung.
This Drigung Kagyu monastery in the central approach valley of Mount Kailash was originally founded some 800 years ago by the Drigung retreat administrator Drubtob Guya Gangpa, ( totally destroyed during the Cultural Revolution) and has been rebuilt since 1983. It is said to be the actual place where the founding master of the Bon tradition, Shenrab Miwoche, stayed when he came to Tibet several thousand years ago and imparted the first Bon rituals relating to the pacification of the spirits who control mountains and environment. The ruins of the Drigung hermitage of Selung (4940 m) lie beyond Gyangdrak.
www.footprinttravelguides.com/c/2848/tibet/&Action=pr...
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