China Cultural Chronicles December 6, 2012
- Chinese Dragon
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- Skating child 01
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They use cases of wooden board made from crude slide, carrying two knife do support.他们使用使用包装箱上的木板制成简陋的滑板，手里握着2把小刀做支撑
- Huang Tu Waterfall 2
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Waterfall in Huangtu (黄土), Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.
- Resting Patrol Boat
- Mum
- Cultural service volunteers hit 300,000 in China
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下载安装Flash播放器China has more than 300,000 registered volunteers providing cultural services across the country, Minister of Culture Cai Wu said on Tuesday.
In Beijing, 27,000 volunteers have registered in at least 16 cultural service centers, according to Cai.
"Culture volunteers have become a backbone for promoting culture in grassroots communities," Cai said, adding that he expects the number of registered cultural volunteers to double in 2013.
Cai urged expanding the recruitment of cultural volunteers and making efforts to include more writers and artists, as well as cultural professionals, in volunteer teams.
Cai said the spirit of cultural volunteering is consistent with China's goal of building a prosperous socialist cultural system that benefits all of its people.
In the past three years, 50 cultural volunteer organizations have presented people in remote areas with artistic performances, cultural exhibitions and occupational training.
- Belly dance becomes popular among Chinese young people
- Museums should not end up as 'vanity projects'
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下载安装Flash播放器The number of registered museums in China has increased to about 3,600 by the end of 2011 and is still growing by about 100 every year. Although it's a prominent increase compared with those in the past, it is not massive to China with a population of 1.3 billion. On average, every 400,000 people have one museum in China, but the figure is 50,000 in developed countries.
However, among these 3000 museums, quite a number are deserted and even difficult to survive. Many places are busy in museum constructions but negligent in devoting human and material resources to their maintenance.
This phenomenon is inevitably correlated with the fact that some places do not regard museums as public welfare buildings that provide people with cultural, educational, learning and entertaining services; but rather as furnishings for political achievements. Such museums, with glossy appearance but no essence, only make visitors feel dull and increase the financial burden of the local government.
In addition, one cannot overlook the fact that most of our museums still rely on government funding for their maintenance. However, limited funding is insufficient to maintain the huge daily overheads. Many museums rely on the institutional system for a long time; they cannot attract visitors with their obsolete operating mode, rigid management, and old fashioned exhibits. Such museums, regarded as mere "achievement furnishings", cannot provide the public with cultural services; on the contrary, they require the taxpayers to bear the costs.
In order to change the difficult situation faced by museums, the relevant departments should take measures to encourage museums to seek for diversified financing channels and operational modes by adopting market principles, so as to enhance their economic strength and at the same time enrich the exhibition contents. In this way, more and more museums will ultimately be able to break through the encirclement, achieve sound development, and provide the public with better cultural services.
- Feasible fowl
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下载安装Flash播放器OISCA project officer Wu Hasi checks an emu's health at the NGO's research institute in Alxa, Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
A Japanese NGO is piloting a project to replace sheep with emus in Inner Mongolia's grasslands. It could reduce overgrazing and enable ethnic Mongolian herders to earn more. Erik Nilsson finds out more.
When most people think of emus, they think of Australia's forests rather than Inner Mongolia's prairies - but that might soon change.
As China's government restricts sheep herding to alleviate the desertification of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region's Alxa grasslands, Japanese NGO the OISCA Institute for Alaxa Ecology is piloting a project to replace sheep with emus. This could reduce overgrazing and enable ethnic Mongolian herders to earn more.
These giant flightless birds can grow to 2 meters tall and weigh 35 kg. Local sheep are 20 to 30 kg - depending on their access to food, which has become scarcer as the Tengali, Badanjilin and Lanbuhe deserts devour Alxa's grasslands.
"The meat from an emu is a bit more than that from a sheep, but the environmental impact of its production is much less," explains OISCA project officer Wu Hasi.
Mutton sells locally for 50-60 yuan ($8-9.6) a kg, while emu meat can go for up to 100 yuan a kg.
There are 66 emus in Alxa, but the project needs 500 to slaughter sustainably.
Wu figures that will take about five years. The birds' numbers have doubled since they were purchased three years ago from Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou and Gansu province's capital Lanzhou.
But about 60 died because of inexpert care.
The NGO will give emu hatchlings - eggs incubate for about 55 days - to nomads and ranchers. It will buy them back after they've matured in 18 months.
"Our organization doesn't profit, but local people do," OISCA program officer Su Lide explains.
The NGO will then slaughter the emus and sell their meat for food, their oil and fat for cosmetics, their leather for luxury accessories and their feathers for clothing insulation. It's still studying pricing.
The most valuable emu meat products sold in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai are brisket, jerky and sausage.
Emus sprout two feathers from each quill, making their down warmer than most birds'. These plumes also enable them to endure Alxa's -40 C winter winds despite having evolved in Australia's sweltering forests.
Emus' softball-sized eggs are used for handicrafts and made into cakes in Guangzhou.
"There isn't much emu meat in China's market," Wu says.
"People will buy it as a novelty."
But the giant flightless birds aren't only foreign to China's supermarkets - they're also alien to its ecology.
OISCA is concerned they might become feral or wild.
"That's our biggest fear," Wu says.
"They tend to return to their pens to eat grain, like chickens."
Several ran away in the first year, he says.
"Some we found," Wu says.
"Some we didn't. One turned up in a park years later."
However, because they don't over-consume and are disease resistant, it's unlikely wild emus would threaten Inner Mongolia's grasslands and deserts. The project site's flock prowls behind a high fence and an indoor area.
- The mountain queen
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下载安装Flash播放器Zhang Jiao has lived in the mountains of Beijing's Yanqing county since 1994 and has devoted her life to reforesting the once-barren alpines.
A millionaire has given up her fortune and 17 years of her life to restore a barren alpine range. Xu Wei reports.
Zhang Jiao became known as the "mountain queen" because of her determination to protect the flora and fauna in her kingdom - an afforested range of alpines in Beijing's Yanqing county.
She has restored several thousand hectares of barren mountains to lushness.
This deed has come with a high price, though.
The former millionaire is in debt. And her work in the mountains has taken a toll on her health.
The 36-year-old Beijinger leased the mountains in 1994 and spent the following years restoring it.
She was still a teenager and knew nothing about agriculture when she undertook this task.
"It's perhaps true that success can belong to the foolish," she says.
Zhang was born to a wealthy traditional Chinese medical doctor. But everything changed when her father abandoned the family for another woman when she was 11. He took the family fortune with him.
She quit school at age 11 and a few years later joined the "gold rushers" - produce resellers, all of whom were much older than her.
"The lack of information among places made it easy to earn money then," she recalls.
"You could buy in one place and resell at a much higher price elsewhere."
However, she spent less time working than traveling and mountaineering.
She spent three months during her first visit to Yanqing in 1994.
She hired several hunters who were in their 60s to guide her and tell her what the hills used to be like.
"Their tours sparked my interest," she says.
"They told me it was getting harder to gather firewood because the trees were disappearing. They also said hunting had been easy decades ago, when there were many animals, ranging from roe deer to rabbits."
- The road to Khamra National Forest Park, Tibet 2012
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Khamra National Park (Ch Kanbula):
Located in the northwest of Jentsa County , 131 kms from Ziling (Ch Xining), the Kanbula National Forest Park covers an area of 39.17 square km. The park is featured with its stone peaks of Danxia landform, forests and man-made sight. This scenic spot consists of hills, eroded hillock, and small basins among mountains, with 50 tourist attractions, of which Danxia landform, Buddhist temples, and Lijia Gorge Power Station are the highlights. Khamra National Park is an ideal place for sightseeing, worshiping, and summer resort. The weather amid the mountains can change very frequently. The middle segment of Namdzong Valley, which extends 5 km, should be the most beautiful place in the park. - Tiger Balm Gardens
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The Tiger Balm Gardens, nowadays known as Haw Par Villa, are one of Singapore's most unique and iconic sites, a Chinese mythological sculpture park filled with colourful tableaux of vivid, often truly bizarre imagery.
It was begun in 1937 by the two Aw brothers (Boon Haw - Gentle Tiger, and Boon Par - gentle Leopard) who had found fortune marketing their father's popular invention, Tiger Balm, hence the original name of the park. Their intention was to create an educational theme park dedicated to Chinese culture, bringing to life various scenes from Chinese myth and legend, along with Buddhist themes such as virtue and vice, reincarnation and hell. It was intended for free public access, for families to learn from and enjoy.
The park was taken over by the local authorities in 1979 and sadly it's revamp in the 1980s was not a happy one, as it was decided to make it into a paying visitor attraction through transformation into the 'Dragon World' amusement park, which entailed some of the original tableaux and sculptures being removed to make way for rides, and hefty entrance fees introduced, never part of the founders' vision.
Over the years visitor numbers decreased sharply and the amusement park elements were eventually dismantled, leaving the sculptures as the main attraction once more and the park is again free to enter, though sadly short of visitors compared to the height of it's popularity when whole crowds thronged the place in the 1960s. Part of the problem lies in it's distance from the centre of Singapore, though with the new Haw Par Villa MRT station opening next door in 2011 getting there now couldn't be easier.
The Tiger Balm Garden was somewhere I'd longed to see since childhood, having heard my parents descriptions with their photos of this fascinating, surrealist landscape of exotic sculpture (their last address in Singapore was a flat not far away on Pasir Panjang Road). It is a great pity a few of the pieces they photographed have since vanished, but the bulk remains as it was, and to finally be visiting it myself was an amazing experience, there was simply no question of us leaving Singapore until we'd done it!
www.kuriositas.com/2011/01/haw-par-villa-unusual-singapor... - Tableaux, Tiger Balm Gardens
Aidan McRae Thomson has added a photo to the pool:
The Tiger Balm Gardens, nowadays known as Haw Par Villa, are one of Singapore's most unique and iconic sites, a Chinese mythological sculpture park filled with colourful tableaux of vivid, often truly bizarre imagery.
It was begun in 1937 by the two Aw brothers (Boon Haw - Gentle Tiger, and Boon Par - gentle Leopard) who had found fortune marketing their father's popular invention, Tiger Balm, hence the original name of the park. Their intention was to create an educational theme park dedicated to Chinese culture, bringing to life various scenes from Chinese myth and legend, along with Buddhist themes such as virtue and vice, reincarnation and hell. It was intended for free public access, for families to learn from and enjoy.
The park was taken over by the local authorities in 1979 and sadly it's revamp in the 1980s was not a happy one, as it was decided to make it into a paying visitor attraction through transformation into the 'Dragon World' amusement park, which entailed some of the original tableaux and sculptures being removed to make way for rides, and hefty entrance fees introduced, never part of the founders' vision.
Over the years visitor numbers decreased sharply and the amusement park elements were eventually dismantled, leaving the sculptures as the main attraction once more and the park is again free to enter, though sadly short of visitors compared to the height of it's popularity when whole crowds thronged the place in the 1960s. Part of the problem lies in it's distance from the centre of Singapore, though with the new Haw Par Villa MRT station opening next door in 2011 getting there now couldn't be easier.
The Tiger Balm Garden was somewhere I'd longed to see since childhood, having heard my parents descriptions with their photos of this fascinating, surrealist landscape of exotic sculpture (their last address in Singapore was a flat not far away on Pasir Panjang Road). It is a great pity a few of the pieces they photographed have since vanished, but the bulk remains as it was, and to finally be visiting it myself was an amazing experience, there was simply no question of us leaving Singapore until we'd done it!
www.kuriositas.com/2011/01/haw-par-villa-unusual-singapor... - 2103 miles since
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