Showing posts with label b. rough guide to china. Show all posts
Showing posts with label b. rough guide to china. Show all posts

15.5.07

Chinese Chopsticks


Chopsticks play an important role in Chinese food culture. Chopsticks are called "Kuaizi" in Chinese and were called "Zhu" in ancient times (see the characters above). Chinese people have been using kuaizi as one of the main tableware for more than 3,000 years.

It was recorded in Liji (The Book of Rites) that chopsticks were used in the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC - 1100 BC). It was mentioned in Shiji (the Chinese history book) by Sima Qian (about 145 BC) that Zhou, the last king of the Shang Dynasty (around 1100 BC), used ivory chopsticks. Experts believe the history of wood or bamboo chopsticks can be dated to about 1,000 years earlier than ivory chopsticks. Bronze chopsticks were invented in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1100 BC - 771 BC). Lacquer chopsticks from the Western Han (206 BC - 24 AD) were discovered in Mawangdui, China. Gold and silver chopsticks became popular in the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907). It was believed that silver chopsticks could detect poisons in food.



Chopsticks can be classified into five groups based on the materials used to make them, i.e., wood, metal, bone, stone and compound chopsticks. Bamboo and wood chopsticks are the most popular ones used in Chinese homes.

There are a few things to avoid when using chopsticks. Chinese people usually don't beat their bowls while eating, since the behavior used to be practiced by beggars. Also don't insert chopsticks in a bowl upright because it is a custom exclusively used in sacrifice.

If you are really interested in chopsticks, you may want to visit the Kuaizi Museum in Shanghai. The museum collected over 1,000 pairs of chopsticks. The oldest one was from the Tang Dynasty.

12.5.07

China lonely planet notes




How did China wanted to be known and remembered by the rest of the world? what are the important things of their culture?

The tourist books let us know what one country wants us to see and know of it, in a tourist book you can find the must important things of a culture. watching a rough tourist guide of China i got several notes.

(Tourist Guide of China notes)
• A world of chopsticks, tea, slippers, massed bicycles, shadow-boxing, exotic pop music, teeming crowds, chaotic train stations, smoky temples, red flags and the smells of soot and frying tofu.
• The ferocious dragons and lions of Chinese statuary have been produced for 25 centuries or more, and the script still used today reached perfection at the time of the Han dynasty, two thousand years ago.
• China is undergoing a huge commercial and creative upheavel.
• Must of China historic architecture has been deliberately destroyed in the rush to modernize.
• China main exports are clothing, textiles, tea and fossil fuels, and its main trading partners are US, Japan, South Korea and Europe.
• Beijing is on everyone´s itinerary, and the Great Wall and the splendour of the imperial city are certainly not to be missed.
• Buddhism, Taoism and Confucionism, though the country is officially atheist.
• Shangai is te mainland`s most westernized city.
• Wealth of wildlife habitats, the country`s vast human population has put pressure on the environment, bringing sone high rpofile creatures to the edge of extinction. Most famous of these is giant panda, which survives in pockets of high bamboo forest. A fes siverian tigers, snub-nosed golden monkey, white headed langur and Chinese alligator.
• Mount everest
• Chinese cities some of the most polluted on earth. Black sludge fills canals and streams; buildings are mired by soot; blue sky is only a memory; the population seem permanently stricken with bronchitis; and acid rain withers plants.
• The only traditional Chinese festival marked by an official holiday is also the biggest of all, the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year.
• Crime is a growth industry in china, with official corruption and juvenile offences the worst problems.
• Chinese have almost no concept of privacy. People will stare at each other from point-blank range and pluck letters or books out of others hands for close inspection. Even toilets are built with partitions so low that you can chat with yuour neighbour while squatting.
• Beijing remains spiritually and politically the heart of the country
• First impression of Beijing are of an almost inhuman vastness, conveyed by the sprawl of apartment buildings in which most of the city`s population of fifteen million are housed.
• Beijing has assimilated a lot of outside influences, and today it is perhaps the most cosmopolitan part of China, with and international flavour reflecting its position as the capital of a major commercial power.
• Students in the latest baggy fashions while away their time in Internet cafès and McDonald`s, hip hip has overtaken the clubs, businessmen are never without their laptop and schoolkidscarry mobile phones in their lunchboxes.
• Beijing Olympic Games 2008
• The wall is so tall because it is stuffed with the bones of soldiers
• The wall is so deep because it is watered with the soldiers blood.
• While the concept of being Chinese has been around for over two thousand years, the closer you look, the less “China” seens to exist as an entity.
• China has one of the largest economies.
• The traditions are expressed more clearly in how the Chinese act than in the symbols and rituals of overt worship.