CIIC:Today's featured article/November 2009
From CIIC
- November 1
Solar halo is an optical phenomenon produced by ice crystals creating colored or white arcs and spots in the sky. Many are near the sun or moon, but others are elsewhere and even in the opposite part of the sky. They can also form around artificial lights in very cold weather when ice crystals, called diamond dust, are floating in the nearby air. (More ... )
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- November 2
The Liulichang Street of Chinese Culture is a 750 meter long collection of all kinds of Calligraphy, art, antiques and paintings that China has to offer. The street is a hubbub of China's culture and one is totally taken in by the aura surrounding it. Located south of the Peace gate in Beijing the street is a favorite with tourists. (More...)
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- November 3
In Dazu County, some 165 kilometers away from Chongqing, are more than 40 sites of stone carvings with over 50,000 statues of Buddha completed from the later Tang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty. The grottoes on the Beishan Hill and Baoding Hill are the largest in scale, richest in content and most refined in artistic skill. (More...)
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- November 4
Situated in the southern part of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and embraced by the Tianshan and Kunlunshan mountains, it is China's largest basin. With its base averaging 800 to 1,300 meters above sea level, it covers 530,000 square km. The basin, widely covered with deserts and dotted with oasis at the fringe, has a terrain descending from the west to the east. (More...)
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- November 5
Xitang is renowned for its many bridges, small lanes and riverwalk canopies. The town's architecture, built during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, are well preserved and are of high artistic and technical research value. (More...)
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- November 6
Wangfujing Catholic Church, known as the Eastern Church, is located on famous Wangfujing Avenue in Beijing. It was first established in 1655. Originally an apartment for two foreign priests during Emperor Shunzhi's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the priests subsequently built a small church on the open ground. (More...)
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- November 7
Suzhou, a cultural and historical city in east China's Jiangsu Province, is celebrated around the world for its elegant gardens.
The history of Suzhou's gardens can be traced as far back as the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC - 476 BC). Distinctive gardens continued to appear throughout the subsequent dynasties, but it was during the Ming (1368 - 1644) and Qing (1644 - 1911) that the garden art of Suzhou was at its zenith. (More ...)
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- November 8
Tatar history in China dates from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when the Tatar tribe was ruled by the nomadic Turkic Khanate in northern China. As this state fell into decline, the Tatars grew in strength, and their name was used to refer to several tribes in the north after the Tang Dynasty. Their homeland was later annexed by Mongols, and when the Mongols pushed west, many Central Asians and Europeans called them Tatars. (More ... )
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- November 9
Shamanistic costumes vary according to different nationalities and regions. The sacred clothing of Oroqen nationality is made of hair-free deer fur or elk fur that is firstly dyed to yellow and then made into collarless robe with buttons down the front. In terms of decoration, the sacred clothing has not only natural worship objects and animal totem patterns on it, but also different patterns of flowers and grasses. (More ... )
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- November 10
The Drungs, numbering about 7,426, live mainly in the Dulong River alley of the Gongshan Drung and Nu Autonomous County in northwestern Yunnan Province. Their language belongs to the Tibetan-Myanmese group of the Chinese-Tibetan language family. (More ...)
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- November 11
The China Aviation Museum is about 40 miles north of Beijing and located at the foot of the fascinating Xiao Tang Hill (Xiaotangshan) in the Changping District of Beijing. It was opened to the public on Nov. 11, 1989.
The museum contains 299 airplanes spanning 120 models and 2,468 weapon samples, including ground-air missiles, high cannons, radar, aviation bombs and aviation cameras. (More ...)
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- November 12
Chinese democratic revolution forerunner and first president of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen was born to a poor family in Xiangshan County, Guangdong province on November 12, 1866.
He graduated as a medical doctor from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, the forerunner of the University of Hong Kong, in 1892 and worked in Macao. (More ...)
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- November 13
Deng Jiaxian (Chinese: 邓稼先) was born in Huining, Anhui Province on June 25, 1924. He entered the Physics Department of the Southwest Associated University in 1941. After graduation in 1945, he taught successively in Wenzheng Middle School and Peiwen Middle School of Kunming and the Physics Department of Peking University. (More ...)
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- November 14
There are in China 406,902 Shuis, the majority of whom dwell on the upper reaches of the Longjiang and Duliu rivers that meander across plains and rolling land interspersed with vast expanses of forests in southern Guizhou Province. They live in compact communities in the Sandu Shui Autonomous County and in Libo, Dushan and other counties. Some Shuis have their homes in the northwestern part of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region... (More)
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- November 15
Chinese imperial food dates back to slave society. Ever since there were emperors and palaces, there has been imperial food, which was served mainly to the emperors, their wives and concubines, and the royal families. Emperors used their power to collect the best delicacies and called upon the best cooks to make delicious food for them. Imperial food represented a dynasty's best cuisine ...(More)
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- November 16
Empress Dowager Cixi was born in 1835 to a Manchu official named Huizheng of the Manchu Yehe Nara Clan in Anhui Province. She was a member of the Plain Yellow Banner division under the Eight Banners, an administrative system for Manchu families. In 1852, Cixi participated in a selection for concubines and was selected on that occasion. After being selected for the emperor's bed, she was promoted to the position of "Noble Person" (gui ren)... (More)
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- November 17
Sima Guang, also known as Mr. Sùshuǐ, was born in 1019 in Sushui Village, Xia County, Shanzhou (present-day Sima Ying Village, Xia County, Shanxi). He is a well-known historian of ancient China who composed 20 species of historical works spanning more than 500 volumes, including the most famous "Zizhi Tongjian" ... (More)
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- November 18
The ancestors of the Jings emigrated from Vietnam to China in the early 16th century and first settled on the three uninhabited lands since the neighborhood had been populated by people of Han and Zhuang ethnic group ...(More )
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- November 19
Born on January 15, 1897 in Haining, Zhejiang Province, Xu Zhimo (Chinese: 徐志摩) (1897-1931) attended Hangzhou No. 1 High School in Hangzhou. Upon his graduation in 1915, he enrolled in Shanghai University, but soon transferred to Beiyang University in Tianjin, and the following year to Beijing University ... (More)
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- November 20
Chuansha, on the Yangtze River, enjoys a very favorable location. Adjacent to Pudong International Airport to the east, Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park to the west, Yangshan Deep Water Port to the south and Jinqiao Export Processing Zone, Chuansha covers an area of 140 sq.km with a permanent population of 31,000 ... (More)
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- November 21
Qian Zhongshu (Chinese: 钱钟书) (1910-1998), also known as Qian Mocun and Qian Huaiju, was born on November 21, 1910 into a scholarly family in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. He attended missionary schools in Suzhou and Wuxi. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 1933 with a B. A. degree in foreign languages and literature. After graduation, he taught at Guanghua University in Shanghai, before he married Miss Yang Jiang in 1935 ... (More)
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- November 22
China Currency Museum is a special national museum affiliated to the central bank of People's Bank of China. It focuses on the collection, exhibition and study of currencies...(More)
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- November 23
Lei Feng (Chinese:雷锋) was a model of wholeheartedly serving the people. He was born into a poor peasant family in Wangcheng County, Hunan Province, in 1940 and was orphaned at the age of 7. (More...)
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- November 24
The second largest in China, Yellow River originates from the northern foot of Bayan Har Mountain in Qinghai Province. It flows 5,464 km easterly across nine provinces and autonomous regions before emptying into the Bohai Sea. With a drainage area of more than 750,000 square km, its annual runoff is 66.1 billion cubic meters. It has more than 40 tributaries, of which Fenhe and Weihe rivers are the main ones. (More...)
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- November 25
Zhengyang Gate is located on the south-north axis of Beijing, south of the Tian'anmen Square and north of Qianmen Street. Now only the city tower and the embrasure watchtower are in existence. (More...)
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- November 26
Known as Henan bangzi, Yuju (Henan opera) originated from local folk plays during the Qing Dynasty, with elements added from Shaanxi opera and Puzhou bangzi. Around the end of the Qing Dynasty Henan opera spread to the cities and under the influence of Peking opera became a fully developed genre popular in Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong and Anhui. (More...)
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- November 27
The spirit of tea art and the tea ceremony is the core of Chinese tea culture. "Art" refers to the techniques and artistic process of making, cooking and tasting tea, while ceremony refers to the spirit with which the process is carried out. (More...)
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- November 28
Kunqu (Kunshan opera) originated in the Kunshan area of Jiangsu around the end of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and the early Ming. Kunqu singing is gentle and clear, its tunes are beautiful and refined, and its stage movements resemble dancing. It reached its peak of popularity at the end of the Ming and the early period of the Qing, exerting tremendous impact on other types of opera. (More...)
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- November 29
China is the hometown of the shadow play. The Chinese leather shadow play is said to date back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD), but it was not until the Song Dynasty (960-1279) that the art form had its earliest appearance in the records of historians. Over the past thousand years, folk artists have been casting leather puppets'shadows on a small white curtain while singing and dancing behind it, depicting the ups and downs of the life of the Chinese people. (More...)
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- November 30
Seal engraving, zhuanke, is a unique art form of Chinese characters. To trace the origin of Chinese seals, one has to relate it to the discovery of the Chinese characters. The most ancient Chinese characters first originated in the Yin Dynasty (the later period of the Shang Dynasty, 16th-11th century BC) as inscriptions on animal bones or tortoise shells. Inscriptions on ancient bronze objects appeared in the Zhou Dynasty (1046 - 256BC). (More...)
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