See China

The Lantern Festival on February 28, 2010, or the 15th day of the 1st lunar month by Chinese calendar, is the finale of the almost one-month-long Chinese New Year celebrations. While the SeeChina videographer Janek is busy shooting videos at Qianmen, the rest of the team decide to relax and savor the last drops of the holiday wine…

Had enough of imperial architecture? There are numerous museums in Beijing that handle subjects other than various dynasties and their palaces. For a taste of the artistic and the literary, try these museums, many of which are found in secluded hutongs — themselves worth the journey and exploration.

China’s biggest internet portal Sina published its “Best Books of the Month” for January of 2010. Li Chengpeng’s book on Chinese soccer scandal, Xiong Peiyun‘s reflections on Chinese society, Chen zhiwu’s financial analysis on Chinese modernization and economy, Mo Yan’s novel Frog and Dan Brown’s the Lost Symbol, among others, were on top of the list voted by both readers and celebrated critics.

As students come back to school from Spring Festival holiday around China, an amateur handicam video about a maverick secondary school student doing funny exercises becomes very popular. Many called him “cao di” （操帝）, or “King of Exercises” out of mischieveous admiration. Note: in China, students in primary and secondary schools are required to do exercises between classes as a means to physical fitness.

How many mother tongues do the Chinese speak? Since Feb. 21 was proclaimed by UNESCO as the Intenational Mother Language Day, it is befitting to introduce the 80+ dialects and spoken languages now used by the 1.3 billion Chinese population across this vast land.

One of China’s spring Festival traditions is putting up couplets of verse on doors and gates of residential houses, restaurants and businesses. Chunlian（春联, also known as duilian 对联)，or spring couplets, are composed of two lines of verse written on vertical strips of paper put up on each side of a door, plus a horizontal one on top of the door.

Qian Chunqi (钱春绮)(1921-2010), one of the most repected Chinese translators of foreign literature, passed away on Feb. 3 in Shanghai at the age of 89.
During his prolific life, Qian has translated more than fifty prominent works of literature from Europe, including those of Goethe, Heine, Schiller, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Hesse and Storm. Among these works, Faust, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Nibelungenlied were among the most challenging works for translators of all languages around the world.

Chinese New Year 2010 begins from today! People will prepare sticky sweets to bribe Zaoshen who will report their family conducts to the Jade Emperor in the Heavenly Palace. And dumplings will come to the table to herald in a series of festive preparations: haircuts, house-cleaning, shopping, papercuts, doorgods, couplets, firecrackers, etc. It’s also the best time to have a rushed wedding before end of the lunar year without being bound by too many dos and don’ts!

Li Qingzhao (李清照, 1084─1155) is the most famous woman ci poet of ancient China. Her delicate sensibility, virtuoso mastering of the rhythm and image of Chinese language and heart-wrenching love story makes her an icon for generations of poem-lovers. A crater on Venus is named after her.

February 4th of 2010 is lichun, literary meaning “spring comes”, marking the first day of spring on Chinese lunar calendar. By custom, people in north China would eat chunbing to observe this day, they call it “bite spring”, and farmers can start preparing seeds to sow. Chunbing is made of bean sprout, meat slices, leek [...]