You know you're on the fringes of China when you see lots of land and few people on it. Such is Qinghai, lonely buffer province between "China proper" and the exotic realms of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia. But its relegated status belies a fascinating history, and a culture unmatched for diversity anywhere else in the Middle Kingdom [at least ethnographically]. Its capital, Xining, is the only city in Qinghai with over a million people. For the cosmopolite, Xining is a stop-over on the way to Lhasa. For the urban frontiersman, it is a holdout against global conformity, a perfect jumping off point into a long simmering stew of cultural richness and nature at her most starkly magnificent.
We come to China to make new lives. Some of us come to make our fortunes. Almost no one comes to make a difference. But Koen Sevenants belongs to that rare minority, experiencing reward and charity, hope and heartbreak from day to day.
Over six hundred thousand children in China have one or both parents in prison, often mothers serving long sentences for killing abusive husbands. Many more parents are executed for crimes such as drug trafficking. In either case, the children are left behind in a limbo of despair. Their parents' criminal status deprives them of state care. The stigma scares off relatives and villagers who might otherwise intervene, because by ancient tradition children of the unfortunate themselves attract bad luck.
You don't have to go to Kunming to enjoy a breathtaking array of China's flowers. Olympic cities from Beijing to Shanghai have crafted floral arrangements as tribute to the Games. Here are the official flowers for China's provinces. We've also included a list of venues country-wide where you can view them.
Chinese : 桂花 gui hua
English : Osmanthus
Latin : Flos Osmanthi Fragrantis
Cities: Suzhou Hefei Guilin Hangzhou
Three of the four cities that boast sweet osmanthus as their official flower are also some of the biggest tourist destinations in China. Tiny and delicate, they are particularly prominent in Suzhou's many world-renowned gardens. Similarly, Hangzhou has taken advantage of their autumnal blooming season to feature them during its annual West Lake Osmanthus Festival in September. Yet despite the efforts of these two cities to claim the flower as their own, Guilin, or ‘The Forest of Osmanthus," as its name means in Chinese, has them both beaten: botanists believe the plant has been in the city for more than 10,000 years, and you can still buy a sweet wine made from the flower in the city today.
At eighty years of age, he admitted defeat. Whether in the Imperial Court or muddy alleys, men remained unnatural creatures. They muddled themselves with endless distinctions, knowledge that only stoked desire for the worthless. Could any unlearn themselves and return to nature's way? In stillness, Laozi heard the answer: not a one. Thus he prepared for a journey to the West, to the mountains from whence, a thousand years later, Buddhism would come. At the border of the Middle Kingdom and the wild beyond, a sentry prevailed on him to record his teachings. Laozi complied, and composed "The Way and Its Power", the Dao De Jing.
Guanxi is not a phenomenon unto itself. The component to “relationship” or “influence” is zeren, which we can translate as “duty” or “obligation”. To misapprehend this dynamic may lead one to dismissing the crucial role of guanxi in Chinaas an outdated myth. The misinformed rationalize that, since influence peddling plays a universal role in acheivement, and China is doing such an admirable job of imitating Western institutions, that the importance of personal connections must surely be receding into the shadow cast by the virtuous light of individual merit.
In China people will often tell you want you want to hear, no matter how improbable it is. A lot of the time, they just don’t want to disappoint. Inevitably this leads to irritation and occasionally confrontation.
When people think of China, two of the most compelling images that come to mind are food and Kung Fu (gongfu or 功夫 in Chinese). Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li are all household names throughout the world, and their movies have become legendary. Yet while there is a deep admiration for the difficulty of the practice, few westerners have much of an understanding of this tradition that extends back thousands of years and grew out of Buddhism. In order to gain an appreciation, I took a journey to China's most famous wushu, or martial arts, monastery the famed Shaolin Temple in Henan Province.
A current of ugliness flows behind the stage-managed beauty of China's Olympic spectacle. It's as inevitable as tears after laughter. Brightness creates shadows, and even the natural optimist struggles with the dark dreams of his subconscious. The work of artists like Li Xiaoqi, therefore, are a necessary counterpoint, especially for those who appreciate a dark comedy more readily than a Disney feature or a blockbuster sequel.
Dead rats, middle fingers, bloody wolves: if the subject matter seems pubescent, it's because at that stage of life we feel the conflict between our internal and external realities most painfully. That conflict informs Li Xiaoqi's work, leading to canvases that forsake conventional notions of aesthetic pleasure for much darker territory. Li is content to dismay the punter ("Who on earth would hang that stuff in their living rooms?"). Those who dig the black humor and symbolic double-entendres, however, are welcome at his table. It's a table full of cynics, to be sure, but then a cynic is only a wounded idealist. The realm between bright ideals and dark instinct is vast and gray, a realm Li Xiaoqi maps courageously.
The heart is the strongest muscle. So it’s fitting to have a day for love the day before China’s world sports party begins. Of course, the Chinese ancients held that the liver was the seat of emotion, but they never had to juxtapose romance and the Olympics.
You are not likely to hear one person bring up that today, the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, is Qixi, Chinese Valentine’s Day. Come next February 14th, though, Chinese store windows will be plastered with giant paper hearts, and lines of couples will stretch around the block at Pizza Huts across the nation.
So marketing means the end of tradition. It’s a shame, at least in this case. The legend behind Qixi makes a lot more sense than a saint linked to romantic love by virtue of having married a lot of people, much less a winged baby taking pot shots at people with a bow and arrow. More importantly, the story of Qixi shows that, no matter how diverse and creative we’d like to think the family of man, there’s only one love story, Tom Hanks’ and Meg Ryan’s not withstanding.
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Chinese : 桂花 gui hua
