Paper crafts

  

Nie Fangjun, a 79-year-old craftsman, paints a paper dragon at his studio in Fenghuang county, Central China's Hunan province, Oct 30, 2011. Born in a paper craft family, Nie began making his own designs at the age of 10. The paper crafts are made with bamboo frames and colored paper pasted outside. Originally used for sacrificial rites in ancient China, the crafts have become part of holiday celebrations. Nie makes various kinds of paper works, including animals, plants and people. "My handmade things are more natural than those made by machine," he said. Nie also said his skills will be handed down and he has six apprentices. His paper crafts have been listed as a state-level intangible cultural heritage.

Pumpkins carved for Halloween

Roasted fingerling potatoes with dried figs

Adapted from Daniel Humm, Eleven Madison Park

Time: 40 minutes plus at least 4 hours' soaking

1/2 pound dried black mission figs or other dried figs

1 1/2 cups brewed black tea, more if necessary

2 pounds fingerling potatoes

1 head garlic

5 sprigs of thyme

1/3 cup olive oil

Salt and black pepper to taste.

1. Place figs in a bowl, cover with hot black tea and let cool. Cover and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours or overnight, depending on initial softness of figs.

2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash potatoes well and trim any bad parts. Separate garlic head into individual cloves but do not remove outer skin.

3. Drain figs. In a bowl, combine garlic, thyme, figs, potatoes and olive oil; toss. Place on roasting pan and bake until potatoes are tender enough to pierce with a fork, about 30 minutes. Remove and season immediately with salt and pepper. Serve. Diners may remove skin from garlic at the table and eat along with the potatoes, if they wish.

General Chinese Family Terms

General Family Terms

qīnqi 亲戚 = relative
zǔzōng祖宗 / zǔxiān祖先 = ancestor

qīn gēge 亲哥哥 = real older brother (same parents)
qīn jiějie 亲姐姐 = real older sister(same parents)

xiōngdì 兄弟 = brothers
jiěmèi 姐妹 = sisters
xiōngdì jiěmèi 兄弟姐妹 = siblings

fùmǔ父母 = parents
zhàngfu hé qīzi 丈夫和妻子 = husband and wife
àiren爱人/ pèi'ǒu 配偶= spouse / lover
nǚpéngyou女朋友 = girlfriend
nánpéngyou男朋友 = boyfriend

yīng'ér婴儿 = infant / baby
xiǎoháir小孩儿 / háizi孩子 = child

Oh, by the way, I've left out the arsenal of in-law terms. If you've got a reason to learn those, well, you're on your own.

Similar Posts (computer generated):

• Addressing strangers
• Mates
• Parents Hurt Rather Than Love Their Children
• Hey, That's Cheating! OK?
• Language Learning is Messy I

China to monitor private lending

The Chinese government is considering establishing a monitoring system for private lending activities after a severe debt crisis of small firms in east China brought the informal lending market into spotlight.

"Relative departments are studying, trying out and improving a tracking and monitoring system on private lending to provide more comprehensive information for economic decision making and macro-economic control," an official with the People's Bank of China, or the central bank, told Xinhua on Thursday.

Private lending should be better regulated and "brought into the sunlight" to boost a multi-level credit market, said the official, who declined to be identified.

The interest rate of private lending should not exceed four times that of bank loans of the same kind, said the official, citing an existing rule set by the Supreme People's Court.

The remarks came amid a credit crunch in the eastern city of Wenzhou, an economic hub known for its successful entrepreneurs.

Many small businesses in Wenzhou resorted to the high-interest informal lending market as they couldn't get bank loans after the government tightened lending to tame inflation. Many later found they could not repay the loans due to bad economic conditions and investment losses.

So far this year, one-fifth of the city's 360,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have stopped operating due to cash shortages, and nearly 100 business owners disappeared or declared bankruptcy to invalidate debts owed to individual creditors from the private lending market, according to the city's council for SMEs.

"Private lending is a beneficial and necessary complement to the formal financing channels," the central bank official said, while urging crackdown on such crimes as illegal fundraising, usury and money laundering.

China's central bank has raised benchmark interest rates three times this year and hiked the reserve requirement ratio for lenders six times, making it hard for small businesses to borrow from banks.

The State Council, or China's cabinet, has cut taxes and ordered state-owned banks to ease the credit squeeze to salvage cash-strapped SMEs in Wenzhou after Premier Wen Jiabao's tour of the city on October 5.

Wen emphasized the importance of SMEs in securing local jobs and urged for bank credit support and preferential tax policies.

A golden harvest

 

China's top tea boom

Fifteen years ago, the Lam family business picked up a consignment of aged tea from a defunct Hong Kong restaurant. Its value has since risen by a factor of 10,000, as the Lams have found themselves part of a boom that is both investment fad and cultural obsession.

"It's like magic," managing director Sam Lam says, as he prepared tea according to the Chinese ritual, pouring boiling water through rough leaves and then into tiny cups to drink and spoke of the profits to be made.

The brew is of pu'er, a dark tea fermented after drying and whose taste mellows with age. Its history is thought to date back between 1,000 and 2,000 years, with legends of growers in mountainous Yunnan province ferociously guarding their cultivation secrets.

Over the past 20 years, prices for aged pu'er have rocketed, while China has encouraged renewed development of a luxury tea culture which parallels that of wine - partly as a source of national pride in a homegrown high-end product.

With more than 70,000 tea businesses on the Chinese mainland, skilled buyers must taste tea in order to assess its quality, which only increases pu'er's mystique and sociability.

"You can tell from the aftertaste, the smoothness," Lam says, pouring out cups with practiced hands.

The tea is sold in pressed round "cakes", wrapped in paper printed with bold designs that reflect the vintage of each one.

Lam's father set up the business, Lam Kie Yuen, after moving to Hong Kong from the war-torn mainland in 1949.

But the pair says it is only since the mid-1990s that the market for luxury pu'er - also, in its less refined forms, a staple of cheap restaurants - has exploded, with middle-class investors joining the wealthy to buy it up.

The Lams are now selling tea from the 1930 to 1950 era for up to HK$200,000 (more than $25,000) per 345-gram cake, having bought much of it in cheap truckloads from dim sum restaurants that closed down.

"Growth slowed during the economic downturn, but it's still ongoing," Sam Lam says.

"As the price is rising, people are buying it less to drink and more to collect and invest."

But luxury pu'er is not just bought to set aside. It is identified with proud, ancient aspects of Chinese culture, in contrast with the cheap "made-in-China" goods that have spurred the country's economic rise.

In Hong Kong's hectic Mong Kok district, fashionably dressed young men gather at a quiet teahouse for lessons from qualified tea master Eliza Liu.

"It's like a drug - I'm addicted now," 21-year-old student Ngan Kan Shing says.

"By discovering tea, I feel that I've learned about China."

He has been coming to classes for six years, but says, "I still only know the basics."

The group examines the color of each brew before sniffing and then slurping it in respectful silence, as Liu talks them through the value of the aged tea.

Grown before artificial pesticides and dried naturally rather than at a high temperature, it has a paler color and a smoother taste.

"Good tea is produced at higher altitude and also depends on climate," Liu says.

"In Yunnan, they say a tea tree can experience all four seasons in one day."

The tea is served from small fine china tea sets, used with a tray that drains off excess water. The first cup of each brew is not drunk, as it is used to clean dust or residue from the leaves. After that, a good tea should taste different with every cup, say experts.

Liu and tea professor Yip Man, who taught her the art, are skeptical of the eye-popping prices paid for some teas, preferring to emphasis tea's longtime role in Chinese medicine and thought.

"Tea has a philosophy behind it, and it's about health," Yip says.

"Tea has been very commercialized, but a cheaper tea may also be as good (as an expensive one). The philosophy is about harmony, bringing people together, peace within the self."

Cultural Revival

BEIJING -- China's rapid economic development is likely to lead to a revival of its culture, said World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin, echoing a recent resolution by the Chinese authorities to accelerate the country's cultural reform and development.

Lin, also World Bank's senior vice-president, made the remarks at the three-day Beijing Forum that opened Friday with a theme of "harmony of civilizations and prosperity for all".

Lin said the advancement and dominance of a civilization is determined by its economic base.

"China's cultural renaissance in the 21st century is hinged on its rapid economic development, too," Lin said.

From 1979 to 2010, China maintained an annual GDP growth rate of 9.9 percent and increased its economic size over 20-fold, becoming the world's second largest economy, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

"In terms of world economic history, it's truly remarkable that China has been able to sustain such rapid growth for such a long period of time," Lin said.

Moreover, China has become the engine of world economic recovery after the 2008 financial crisis that dragged down the global economy.

Lin said China's economic momentum is likely to continue, judging from the economic growth trajectory of Japan, Republic of Korea and China's Taiwan region, which share much similarity in economic growth mode.

However, he noted that whether China can revive its culture depends on several factors, among which the most crucial is whether Confucianism can support an ever-changing economic base with constant innovation of artifacts and improvements in production force.

Lin said China's culture, represented by the Confucianism, has the ability to adapt and innovate itself to fit a changing economic base and keep pace with changing times and context while maintaining its core ethic, namely benevolence.

His comments came shortly after China adopted guidelines to improve the nation's cultural soft power and advocate Chinese culture.

As a major form of support for national unity and a source of creativity, China's cultural industry will play a more important role in the country's economic and social development, read a statement issued by the sixth plenary session of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Oct 18.

Minister of Culture Cai Wu said culture is soft power and the government must pay more attention to culture and creativity to improve the quality of country's economic growth.

Lin said other emerging economies like India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa will also commence their culture renaissance on the basis of their respective cultural heritages and core ethnic values.

"The 21st century is likely to see not only a renaissance of the Chinese civilization, but also the co-development, joint prosperity, and shining together of multiple civilizations in the world," Lin said.

The Beijing Forum, which has entered its eighth year since its initiation in 2004, aims to promote the study of humanities and social sciences around the world.

The annual event was jointly sponsored by Peking University, the Beijing Education Commission and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies.

Recipe Oyster Omelet

Recipe Oyster Omelet

Ingredients (serves two greedy gourmets):

500 g cleaned pearl oysters (see note)

100 g sweet potato starch plus 1 cup water

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp potato starch (extra)

1 tsp white pepper

2 eggs

Chopped coriander leaves for garnish

Method:

1. Mix the oysters with the potato starch and pepper.

2. Bring a small pot of water to a high boil and drop the oysters in. Count to 10 and then remove the oyster immediately. Drain and set aside.

3. Heat up a flat-bottomed frying pan over medium fire. When the pan is hot enough, add some oil to coat the bottom generously.

4. Mix together the potato starch and water and mix well. Add a small ladle of starch solution to the pan, swirling it around to spread it thinly. Leave to crisp until the starch turns totally transparent.

5. Break the eggs into the pan and spread them evenly over the starch base.

6. Add the oysters and sprinkle with fish sauce and more pepper to taste.

7. Flip the omelet to cook the oysters, and after a minute, flip it back and garnish with chopped coriander leaves. Serve immediately.

Food notes:

The oysters used here are the little shucked pearl oysters that are sold in plastic tubes at local fishmongers. They have to be washed several times to get rid of small bits of broken shell, and the slime that seems to stick to their skirts. Don t be discouraged by the process.

Wash the oysters thoroughly the first time, then throw out any broken or dubious ones. Clean your picked oysters and add 1 tablespoon of corn starch or all-purpose flour to the shellfish. Gently rub them with your fingers. This encourages the dark slime to stick to the flour. Rinse off the flour and slime and you have nice clean fat oyster meat. Give it a final rinse for good measure. They re now ready for use.

 

Song of Two Tigers

Song of Two Tigers

Two tigers, two tigers
Run so fast, run so fast
One has no ears
One has no tail
So strange! So strange!

两只老虎，两只老虎 跑得快，跑得快， 一只没有耳朵 一只没有尾巴 真奇怪，真奇怪

liǎng zhī lǎo hǔ , liǎng zhī lǎo hǔ pǎo de kuài , pǎo de kuài yī zhī méi yǒu ěr duō yī zhī měi yǒu wéi bā , zhēn qí guài , zhēn qí guài

China announces launch of Shenzhou-8 successful

Commander-in-chief of China's manned space program Chang Wanquanannounced early Tuesday that the launch of Shenzhou-8 unmanned spacecraft is successful.

The spacecraft was successfully sent into the designated orbit after the blastoff at 5:58 a.m. at theJiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern desert area, carried by an upgraded Long March-2F rocket.

It is heading to rendezvous with the Tiangong-1, or "Heavenly Palace-1" that was put into space on Sept. 29 for the country's first space docking.

The docking, if successful, will pave the way for China to operate a permanent space station around 2020, and make the nation the world's third to do so.

The launch was attended by Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang. It was also observed by senior experts from the European Space Agency and the German Aerospace Center at the launch site.

The docking will happen within two days after the launch of the Shenzhou-8 at a height of 343 km above Earth's surface. The spacecraft will return to Earth after two docking operations.

The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

As a person who has spent a great amount of time researching this period in China's history, I would suggest this film over Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.

The Painted Veil � This isn't historical, but it is a pretty great glimpse of what life in rural China would have looked like around 1900. The movie is about a doctor who accepts a position in the countryside treating an epidemic. The scenery is amazing, and the story is definitely memorable. Edward Norton and Naomi Watts both give good performances. Well worth a watch.

I must admit that I'm a bit partial to this movie because it was filmed just a few miles fromYizhou, where I lived for a year.

English names in Chinese

A Chinese name is mainly translated based on the pronunciation of the name in other languages. However, since some Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean share some similarities to Chinese language, for example, characters are also used in these languages although the pronunciation can be totally different. In such cases, the names are usually translated based on the written form rather than the pronunciation.

1. Abel 阿贝尔 (ā bèi ěr )
2. Adam 亚当 (yà dāng )
3. Ajna 艾娜 (ài nà )
4. Akiva 阿姬娃 (ā jī wá )
5. Alanna 阿拉娜 (ā lā nà )
6. Albert 阿尔伯特 (ā ěr bó tè )
7. Alessandra 阿蕾桑德拉 (ā lěi sāng dé lā)
8. Alex 阿列克斯 (ā liè kè sī)
9. Alexander 亚历山大 (yà lì shān dà )
10. Alexandra 亚历山德拉 (yà lì shān dé lā )
11. Amanda 阿曼达 (ā màn dá )
12. Amandine 阿芒丁 (ā máng dīng )
13. Amalia 阿玛丽亚 (ā mǎ lì yà )
14. Amelie 阿梅丽 (ā méi lì )
15. Ana 阿娜 (ā nà )
16. Andrew 安德鲁 (ān dé lǔ)
17. An'lee 安丽 (ān lì)
18. Anna 安娜 (ān nà )
19. Annabelle 安娜贝拉 (ān nà bèi lā )
20. Antonia 安托妮娅 (ān tuō ní yà )
21. Ashanti 阿善蒂 (ā shàn dì)
22. Attila 阿蒂拉 (ā tí lā )
23. Bailey 贝莉 (bèi lì )
24. Barbara 笆笆拉 (bā bā lā )
25. Benjamin 本杰明 (bén jié míng )
26. Bethany 贝塔尼 (bèi tǎ ní )
27. Bianca 碧昂卡 (bì áng kǎ )
28. Brian 布莱恩 (Bù lái ēn)
29. Brianna 布里安娜 (bù lǐ ān nà )
30. Bryan 布莱恩 (bù lái ēn )
31. Carmen 卡门 (kǎ mén )
32. Carina 卡莉娜 (kǎ lì nà )
33. Carlos 卡洛斯 (kǎ luò sī )
34. Caroline 卡罗琳 (kǎ luó lín )
35. Carolyn 卡洛林(kǎ luò lín )
36. Catriona 卡崔娜 (kǎ suī nà )
37. Celia 希莉娅 (xī lì yà )
38. Charlie 查利 (chá lì )
39. Charlotte 夏绿蒂(xià lǜ dì )
40. Chelsey 切尔西(qiè ěr xī )
41. Chiara 基娅拉 (jī yà lā )
42. Chris 克里斯 (kè lǐ sī )
43. Christian 克里斯蒂安 (kè lǐ sī dì ān )
44. Christoph 克来斯多夫 (kè lái sī duō fū )
45. Christos 克来斯多 (kè lǐ sī dō )
46. Ciara 塞拉 (sài lā )
47. Clara 克莱拉 (kè lái lā )
48. Conner 康纳 (kāng nà )
49. Conor 康纳 (kāng nà )
50. Crista 克里斯塔 (kè lǐ sī tǎ )
51. Daisy 戴西(dài sī )
52. Daniel 丹尼 (dān ní )
53. Declan 迪克兰 (dí kè lán )
54. Delaney 德蕾妮 (dé léi ní )
55. Demi 德米 (dé mǐ )
56. Devin 德文 (dé wén )
57. Didi 迪迪 (dí dí )