Name: Crystal Cup
中文名: 水晶杯
Dated to：475~221B.C.
Culture: Warring States Period
Unearthed: 1990@Warring States Tomb, Shitang Village, Banshan Town, Hangzhou, Zhejiang
Current Location: Cultural Relics Archaeological Research Institute Of Hangzhou, Zhejiang
Dimension: height: 15.4cm

Open mouth, slope wall, round bottom, outward circle foot. a plain design with no decorations; transparent; and surface was well polished; the middle and bottom of the vessel has natural sponge-like crystals.

A Precious Drinkware

This cup is a treasure drinkware made of high quality natural Quartz crystal. Its amazing production techniques and technological level is rare among domestic relics.

The Crystal Cup is the oldest and the largest crystal cup among archaeological finds in China. It is very similar to a contemporary glass.

Unraveling the Mystery of the Age of Hangzhou City

The exact age of Hangzhou City is still unknown. People always say Hangzhou City has a long history of about 2000+ years. However, 2200 years ago, east to West Lake, where Hangzhou City is located now, is still under water. So the ancient Hangzhou city should be originated in the hills to the west and south of West Lake.

With the discovery of this crystal cup, which is a precious vessel that symbolizes the owner’s unusually high social status, historians hypothesis that Banshan Town region (where this cup was unearthed) might be the original location of ancient Hangzhou City.

[Forbidden Treasure of China Series]
This is the 15^th of 64 culture heritages that the government of China forbids to exhibit abroad. The complete list is here. In Chinese.

[Chinese Keywords]
国家一级文物 禁止出境

Although New Year pictures are produced everywhere throughout China, there are four most famous schools: Yangliuqing, Tianjin; Wuqiang, Hebei; Taohuawu, Suzhou, Jiangsu; and Yangjiabu, Weifang, Shandong. They have different features, advantages, and leading positions. Taohuawu and Yangliuqing paintings represent art appreciation of people in the cities; Wuqiang new year pictures arise from rural areas as pure peasant art, and has a strong rustic country flavor.

Here I collected a few sets of Yangliuqing new year pictures. Hope you will like them. If you want know more about new year pictures from Yangliuqing, you may read this great article provided by chinaculture.org here: Yangliuqing New Year Pictures.

A Yangliuqing new year picture company in Tianjin called Wen Sheng Ge (literally means “Art Prosperity Loft”) also have a great collection of yangliuqing new year pictures. Due to copyright issue, I cannot put them here. You can view them at these two webpages: Wenshengge Yangliuqing new year pictures set1 and set2.

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A show of walking on stilts

Stealing celestial herb

Carp leaping in lotus pond

Wild with Joy

Be abundant every year

Having fun with a katydid

Giving birth to many sons

Over abundance of things in successful years

Three blessings

Be abundant forever

Wish you a long life

Wealthy and Peace

Five children trying to seize lotus

Rich harvest

Shibuxian a manchu theatrical performance

Qin qiong and Yuchi Gong (Door gods)

The Gods of Good Fortune Longevity and Official career

Four blessings

Lotus carp

Rooster and child

12►

Due to high turnover and its single use home decoration purpose, new year pictures are hard to preserve and very few ancient new year pictures can be found nowadays. I have a collection of 7 pictures here. They are all from Qing Dynasty, more than at least 100 year ago:

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As an important traditional Chinese culture and valuable intangible culture heritage, Yangliuqing new year pictures have also been featured on postage stamps issued by China Post:

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Do you know any great Yangliuqing new year pictures? Please share with us here.

I have finished a series of 6 posts about Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century. They are here:

• Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century – I/VI: Songs
• Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century – II/VI: Songs
• Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century – III/VI: Choir & Opera
• Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century – IV/VI: Instrumental Solo
• Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century – V/VI: Chamber, Concerto, National Orchestra
• Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century – VI/VI: Ballet, Orchestra

Now in this post, I have removed review commentary and compiled all tables into a complete list. For your convenience, I put songs, opera and choir to the end in case that you have problem understanding Chinese in these vocal music.

In this list, I included video links (from youtube.com, youku.com tudou.com, etc.) as long as I can find one. But not all of them are available online. I cannot find some less popular ones. If you know some good video/audio links, please advise me. I appreciate that.

This is a long list. Indeed, it’s somewhat controversial. But it is still a very good representative list of Chinese Music in the transitional and eventful 20th century. So I am sure you will get a comprehensive understanding of Chinese Music through this list.

Get a cup of coffee or tea. Turn on your speaker or put on your headphone, please enjoy!

Instrumental Solo | Chamber | Concerto | National Orchestra
Ballet | Orchestra | Opera | Choir | Song

Instrumental Solo

Chamber Music

Concerto

National Orchestra

Ballet Music

Orchestra

Opera

Choir

Songs

Some stats about Works from Taiwan vs. Mainland

Reviewing the above list, we can find it’s roughly objective and representative. Opening up the “classic” heart knot, this list is indeed helpful to establish an overall concept of Chinese music in 20th century.

As painstaking as these efforts are, we can take it as musicians’ “big show of the century”, or a “rewarding ceremony”. Now they are on stage, and we might give them some applauds.

Once this drama is over, the list of works were exposed in light, musicians are no longer hidden dragons, and their works are no longer high on the shelves. Now the era of appreciation and criticism has come.

With report card (the list) in hands, the audience will sure evaluate the merit of these works; and Chinese Music will enter a very different musical era.

Ballet Music

Red Detachment of Women Ballet

Orchestra

[Chinese Keyword]
二十世纪华人音乐经典

Recently, this blog is getting lots of referring traffic from a website called ChinaOnTV.com. First, I appreciate its referrals. I couldn’t find out which page it referred me. Then I realize it is also a member of China Blog Network. So I got random referrals when people click the CBN widget on its Partner page.

After browsing the website, I think I should review briefly and introduce it to you.

According to their “About Us” page:

ChinaOnTV.com is a U.S. based online video network that produces and collects English videos from all around and about China. In a time when all media about China tends to blow too hot or too cold, we hope to provide some middle ground. Our mission is to continually increase the public’s awareness of China’s history as well as contemporary Chinese life and achievements.

In my previous post, I introduced a youtube video channel – chinesecivilization, which also features lots of China-related videos. Unlike chinescivilization which seems to be maintained by individual, ChinaOnTV.com is much more formal and more like a business or enterprise. This is reflected in its content quality & resources as well as its overall website design.

Although the logo says it’s still in “beta”, apparently it already has lots of quality content. It’s a pure video website. You cannot find much introduction text. Videos are categorized in seven different channels:

Business | Culture | Learning (Chinese) | Travel | City Focus | Cuisine | Cartoon

As plenty in quantity, its video quality is also excellent. It has lots of partners all around the globe which provide them with copyrighted videos. According to a Chinese news report, chinaontv.com was considered a marketing opportunity for Chinese media to get international exposure.

Indeed, there’s still much room to improve for this “beta” website, such as web design, user interface, navigation, text content, etc. Let’s see how it will look when it’s out of beta phase.

Note: I found this site a little sketchy that I have to warn you here.

This website already attracts heavy traffic (alexa rank: 4322 as of 02/27/2010) so far. It seems like a well known respectful website. However, two evidences make it worrisome:

1. Google search hints: when you type chinaontv, google will give you hints like “virus”, “malware”, “spyware”, etc. I guess, it had used these bad things to promote the website.

2. alexa referrals: alexa’s chinaontv.com page shows 77% referring traffic to chinaontv.com was from whatseek.com, which is a marketing site. Usually, you will see most traffic is from search engine or social network.

Anyway, it seems to be a safe website for now and has lots of good stuff. Why not check it out!

So far, more than 90 countries and territories in the world have issued Chinese zodiac stamps. Here, I present a few tiger zodiac postage stamps which are dedicated to the world’s “Tigers”. Best wishes to everyone a healthy and happy year of the tiger!

This year is a Geng-yin (Sexagenary cycle) Year of the Tiger. It is interesting that 60 years ago on last Gengyin Year of the Tiger, the world’s first Chinese zodiac stamp was born in Japan – of course, it was a Tiger stamp (right picture).

It was issued by Japan Post in 1950. Tiger drawing is taken from a masterpiece “Painting of Dragon & Tiger ” by famous Japanese painter Maruyama Okyo. Its face value is only 2 yen, but its significance is undoubted.

In the beginning, there was controversial in philatelic community about this stamp. There were other countries that had issued tiger themed stamps earlier than this Japanese one. So some argued that this one issued in 1950 cannot be considered as the earliest Chinese zodiac stamp.

However, soon other scholars pointed out that although animal themed stamps by other countries were earlier, they had no relationship with Chinese zodiac culture.

The 12 Chinese Zodiac animals were spread to Japan as early as 1000 years ago. Japanese still have exactly the same zodiac animals culture and folk custom with China. Year 1950 was indeed a Chinese Lunar Year of the Tiger. Japan has issued zodiac stamps for more than 50 years from 1950 to 2009.

So there are sufficient grounds to conclude that this tiger stamp is the “ancestor” of all Chinese Zodiac postage stamps.

Above: Tiger stamps issued by China in 1986, 1998, 2010.

Above: Tiger stamp issued by Macau.

Above: Four more tiger stamps issued by Japan in 1998.

Above: Tiger stamps issued by other Asian countries: Bhutan, Singapore, Korea, and Vietnam.

Above: Two Year of the Tiger Stamps issued by USPS. See news for current 2010 USPS tiger stamp.

Above: And last, can somebody tell me which country is this set of tiger stamps from? Any ideas?

View more beautiful cloth tiger images at 52hansheng.com, part I (14 images), part II (16 images)

Chinese folk cloth tiger is one of the most widely circulated toys. In a Chinese mind, tiger can help drive off evil and avoid disasters, is an auspicious symbol of peace, and also can protect one’s wealth.

Fifth day of in May of Lunar Calendar Year is Dragon Boat Festival. One of the popular customs is to make cloth tiger for children, or to paint a tiger face on the child’s forehead with Realgar. It means healthy, strong and brave.

Cloth tiger has a variety of forms. There are single-headed tiger, double-headed tiger, four-headed tigers, mother-and-child tiger, pillow tiger, tiger sets, etc..

Materials and processes in producing cloth tiger can also be different from each other.

The most common ones are made to shape with cotton, silk cloth, and then loaded with sawdust or bran inside. The outside depicts a tiger’s facial features and patterns with various methods such as painting, embroidery, cutting, pasting, and patching.

Cloth tiger usually have big head, large eyes, large mouth, and big tail to highlight their courageous demeanor. Tiger-head and facial features are often naive and childlike, just like the innocence of lovely children.

In addition to the Dragon Boat Festival, on the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival and other festivals, as well as newborn baby’s “3rd Day Bath”, “Hundredth Day”, 1st birthday, 2nd birthday, etc., people often make various forms of cloth tiger, with the same blessings and wishes.

52hansheng.com has 30 beautiful images of cloth tiger. I selected 4 here. You can view more at the original posts. They look so cute, aren’t they?

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View more beautiful cloth tiger images at 52hansheng.com, part I (14 images), part II (16 images)

Happy Tiger New Year | by {link:http://nipic.com/dongzhizao}dongzhizao{/link}

Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese new year vary widely. Here I summarize ten folk typical folk customs for Chinese New Year. Hope it can help you understand better about these complicated festivities.

1. Kitchen God Festival (Little New Year) 祭灶节 wikipedia

On the twenty third day of the twelfth lunar month, just before Chinese New Year, Kitchen God (Zao Jun) returns to Heaven to report the activities of every household over the past year to the Jade Emperor (Yu Huang). The Jade Emperor, emperor of the heavens, either rewards or punishes a family based on Zao Jun’s yearly report.

So on that day, Chinese families worship Kitchen God in order to please him. Lots of other New Year activities also started today. It marks the beginning of Chinese New Year holiday time.

2. House Cleaning 扫尘

In order to establish a fresh beginning in the New Year, families must be organized both within their family unit, in their home, and around their yard. This custom of a thorough house cleaning and yard cleaning is another popular custom during “Little New Year”. It is believed that in order for ghosts and deities to depart to Heaven, both their homes and “persons” must be cleansed.

3. New Year Duilian 春联(Couplet) wikipedia

In Chinese poetry, a duìlián or antithetical couplet is a pair of lines of poetry usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people’s homes. The two lines have a one-to-one correspondence in their metrical length, and each pair of characters must have certain matching properties such as meaning and tone. A duilian is ideally profound yet concise, using one character per word in styles Classical Chinese. A special, widely-seen type of duilian is the chunlian, used as a New Year’s decoration that expresses happy and hopeful thoughts for the coming year.

4. New Year Picture 年画 wikipedia

A New Year picture, is an important and popular Banhua in China. Its original form was a picture of a door god fashioned during the Qin Dynasty. Later, more subjects, such as conventions, carnivals, the Kitchen God, women and babies were included. Customarily, as each Chinese New Year arrives, every family modifies its New Year picture in order to “say goodbye to the Past and welcome the Future”

5. Door God (门神) & Window decoration (窗花)

A door god is a Chinese decoration placed on each side of an entry to a temple, home, business, etc., which is believed to keep evil spirits from entering.

Paper cut with New Year blessing themes are put on windows to decorate the house.

[Images sources] 1.wikipedia | 2.J.Star | 3.小趴 | 4.ioldmo | 5.chang’r | 6.westzest | 7.kekenet | 8. kanegen | 9.多瑙河之野鸭 | 10.jameswy | 11.kinmen

6. Pay a New Year call 拜年

An important activity during the Spring Festival is bainian （to pay a New Year call）.People start to pay New Year calls from the lunar New Year’s Day，that is， the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar.

On the morning of the lunar New Year’s Day，people get up very early and call on others. The earlier one does so，the more sincere he is. Moreover，people wear new clothes and a new cap，symbolizing that a new year has begun. more>>

7. Gift (Lucky) Money 压岁钱 wikipedia

On the first day of lunar， the young generation congratulates the old generation with “Happy New Year！”

Then the old generation will give the young some lucky money which wrapped with red paper or red envelope. Because red is a color with joyful. Lucky money means the old generation‘s love to the young and hope them can have a good luck in this new year. this is the lucky money which lots of the young want.

8. Firecracker 爆竹 wikipedia

The tradition of observing the conquest of Nian (a beast, the same word as “Year”) is carried on from generation to generation. The term Guo Nian, which may mean Survive the Nian becomes today Celebrate the (New) Year as the word guo in Chinese having both the meaning of pass-over and observe.

The custom of putting up red paper and firing fire-crackers to scare away Nian should it have a chance to run loose is still around. However, people today have long forgotten why they are doing all this, except that they feel the color and the sound add to the excitement of the celebration.

9. New Year’s Eve 除夕 wikipedia

The biggest event of any Chinese New Year’s Eve is the dinner every family will have. A dish consisting of fish will appear on the tables of Chinese families. It is for display for the New Year’s Eve dinner. This meal is comparable to Christmas dinner in the West.

After the dinner, some families go to local temples, hours before the new year begins to pray for a prosperous new year by lighting the first incense of the year; however in modern practice, many households hold parties and even hold a countdown to the new lunar year. Beginning in 1982, the CCTV New Year’s Gala was broadcast four hours before the start of the New Year.

10. Ancestor worship 祭祖 wikipedia

It is also important to worship the family ancestor in the beginning of the New Year to have their blessings and to honor the deeds and memories of the deceased.

Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) is the happiest moment of year for Chinese people.  Happiest moment must have happiest music. Here I selected ten happiest Chinese folk music for you. Wish you a happy new year of the tiger!

Folk festival music, a major tributary of Chinese folk music, has strong characteristics of secular music. It is good at the expression of lively scene of carnival, and rendering festive atmosphere. Usually it is played with uninhibited, bold, highly expressive musical instruments, such as the suona, gongs, drums and so on.

Here I also recommend this CD if you are interested in a Chinese New Year Music Concert. It is played by Vienna State Opera Orchestra in 2003 conducted by Chinese director Peng, Jia-peng.

2003 Chinese New Year Concert In Vienna

1. 春节序曲 Spring Festival Overture video

2. 金蛇狂舞 Wild Dance Of The Golden Snake video

3. 喜洋洋 Boisterous Elation video

4. 花好月圆 Beautiful Flowers with the Full Moon video

5. 彩云追月 Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon link

6. 闹新春 Celebrate New Spring video

7. 步步高 Rising Higher Step by Step video

8. 娱乐升平 Prosperity Everywhere video

9. 八段景 (Yanshan) Eight Sceneries video

10. 采茶舞曲 Tea Harvest video