Called the Oriental Venus de Milo, the lone Bodhisattva statue of the Northern Wei period (AD 386-534) is a precious relic of religious art in Shandong.

As one of the important cradles of Chinese civilization, Shandong, in East China, is home to a rich collection of cultural relics and historical sites.

Based on the data of the third national cultural relics census conducted in 2011, Shandong has more than 50,000 registered unmovable cultural relics, including three world cultural heritage sites – Taishan Mountain, the Confucius Temple complex and the Great Wall of the Qi State (386-221 BC). It also has 101 key cultural relics under national protection and 687 under provincial protection.

The province hosts 195 museums of all kinds, which house up to 1.5 million relics and artifacts, including more than 10,600 national first-class treasures, topping the nation both in quantity and rarity.

Among them, Shandong Museum located in Jinan, capital of the province, stands out as China’s largest comprehensive provincial museum.

“Shandong boasts a long history and splendid culture and is known as the hometown of Confucius, Mencius, ancient Chinese philosophers, and Sun Tzu, the author of the Art of War, who have left behind numerous precious historical relics,” said Lu Wensheng, curator of the museum.

“The 139,277 treasures placed in the museum are all silent witnesses to past of the country and the province, ranging from oracle bones dating back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), to pottery of the Neolithic Age and bronze items of the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC),” he added.

One of the museum’s top 10 treasures on display is an eggshell-thin black pottery cup. Unearthed in Weifang, Shandong province in 1960, it is a masterpiece of Longshan Culture, which existed in the area around 4,000 years ago in the late Neolithic period. The shiny long-handled cup, which is only 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters thick at its thinnest points, represents the best pottery-making technique in ancient China.

Another highlight is the 4,000 bamboo slips containing inscriptions on military strategy, including the earliest version of the Art of War. Known as “the holy book of warfare”, the text dates back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

They were excavated from a tomb of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) in Yinque Mountain in the city of Linyi in 1972. The find was considered one of the top 100 archaeological discoveries in China in the 20th century.

The museum also has a large collection of Buddhist figures made from bronze, stone and ceramic, offering an overview of the full spectrum of Shandong Buddhist figurine art through the centuries from the Northern Wei (386-534) to Sui (581-618) dynasties.

Among them, the lone Bodhisattva statue of the Northern Wei period (AD 386-534) is a precious relic of religious art in Shandong. Found in Bo’xing county, the statue is carved in limestone and stands about 120 cm tall.

It is set against a circular nimbus with a lotus rosette. The statue is draped in pearls and ribbon cords while its skirt falls in delicate folds.It is called the Oriental Venus de Milo because it is armless and has a half-smiling face.

This is just a glimpse of the museum’s rich collection. Currently, more than 4,500 relics are on display at the museum’s 10 exhibition halls, which draw more than 2 million visitors annually.

Additionally, many local museums attract visitors with their different distinctive features, including the Weifang Kite Museum, the Zhucheng Dinosaur Museum as well as the Ancient Chinese Car Museum and the Qi State Historical Museum in Linzi, the capital of the ancient Chinese state of Qi more than 2,000 years ago.

These museums have not only attracted increasing numbers of visitors and researchers but also promoted international cultural exchanges. They have held many exhibitions in countries such as the United State, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and South Korea.

wangqian2@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/30/2012 page24)

Illustration by Mice Hell

Cormac Shine

Staff Writer

The road from Shanghai airport into the city itself is a pretty good introduction to modern China. Cranes and building sites abound everywhere, with skyscrapers, roads, flyovers and power lines being thrown up as fast as possible, with a thin layer of smog hanging static in the near distance, all unfolding before me while my taxi driver took the opportunity to shave, brush his teeth and gargle out the window, whether the car was moving or not. This was the scene confronting me when I arrived in July to teach English in the remote Jiangxi province, a region of 40 million people and more than twice the size of Ireland. That Jiangxi doesn’t even register with most Chinese people (“Shaanxi?”, “Oh, you mean Guangxi?”, “Ah, Jiangsu!”) illustrates the sheer scale and diversity of Chinese society, and introduced me to a whole different side of life in this massive country.

A fifteen-hour train ride and a spin on a bus brought me to my destination: Badu, central Jiangxi. This town lies at the convergence of the many rice-farming villages that stretch out in every direction, and it was there that eight volunteers taught 400 kids between us. Only in places like this does the value of education really become apparent: pass your middle school exams and you will progress to high school, and hopefully a better job. Fail and go to trade school or back to the farm for years of back-breaking manual labour. The feeling that we couldn’t exactly slack was always there, as this was probably the only time they might meet a native English speaker.

I taught 13-year-olds who had been studying English for a number of years. The standard of their pronunciation is what one would expect from a school in rural China, with pupils taught by teachers who have mostly never left the area, let alone visited an Anglophone country. Indeed, my host mother told me that I was the first foreigner she had ever seen, and that it was just like in the movies. On a visit to the hospital, as I lay overcome by exhaustion my doctor asked if he could take a photo with his smartphone, which he proceeded to show off to the nurses as I was hooked up to an IV.

The contrasts of China today were very obvious in Badu. Farmers work on the rice paddies as they have for thousands of years, with little change apparent apart from the advent of television and Wifi in many homes. Growth has also exploded. In the last five years, the town’s elders informed us, the town’s revenue has increased from just under 6 million yuan (€765,000) to 400 million yuan (€51m). The town also looks like one that has been built in a hurry – the cheap concrete buildings being thrown up gave an unlikely reminder of Ireland during the Celtic Tiger.

One of the things that surprised me the most was the attitude of many towards the government. I heard during my travels (albeit in the relative safety of English) a young teacher from Shanghai berate the government’s treatment of the Mongolian minority, a software developer from Xian applaud the 1989 demonstrations as we stood in Tiananmen Square, and a college student angrily criticise the One-Child Policy, blaming it on the “dead body in the square”. The only reminder that we were in a one-party state, a fact clouded by the seeming lack of road rules or any kind of regulation in many areas, was the fact that hostels scan your passport on arrival, internet cafés take a photo of you before you can surf the net, and the periodic visits from the local police to make sure we were who we said we were. Oh, and CCTV’s Soviet-like coverage of the London Olympics, complete with heroic montages of that day’s medal winners and endless replays of the table tennis finals. Miraculously, Katie Taylor’s final was one of the few non-Chinese victories I managed to see live.

The drinking culture also took me aback. My preparation pack had ominously warned me that “guys are usually expected to drink with the males at the meal, which can sometimes turn into a contest of masculinity with friends or relatives at more formal gatherings… If you do accept the offer, girl or boy, prepare to drink a lot.” As it turned out, the only inaccuracy of this statement was the use of “sometimes”. Over the course of five weeks, I was forced to drink a concoction of beer mixed with baijou (a 52% spirit that translates as “white spirits”, and tastes like it too) by my host family, only to be sent to school on my very own moped five minutes later; I downed a bottle of beer while the First Secretary of the Badu Communist Party cheered me on at a formal dinner; took a volley of toasts from eight retired party officials at lunch; and partook in a deadly serious contest with the school’s board of directors, which took on the atmosphere of Cold War negotiations as each team plotted who to toast and in what combination in their respective languages. As far as I could tell, the key to advancement in the Communist party seems to be an ability to stomach large quantities of beer, begging the question why the Irish haven’t given Communism a go yet.

Overall, it was a pretty surreal experience. Never before have I been so lost looking at a sea of Mandarin characters in restaurants and train stations. My ability to mime questions greatly improved (chugga-chugga-choo-choo really works when looking for the train station, it turns out). Never before have I been asked to pose for pictures four times in one day in the capital of a supposedly worldly country, just because I’m different. And never before have I seen such a difference in the lives of citizens of the same country up close. From the farmers of Badu to the young Shanghai rich boys posing with champagne in nightclubs, China is changing pretty rapidly and a truly fascinating place.

Xinhua | By Agencies

A lamb feeds on the Narat Grasslands in Xinyuan county, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, August 21, 2012. Photo: Xinhua

The ancient sites of Henan

Put off by the crush of tourist hordes flooding China’s famous historical sites like Beijing’s Forbidden City or the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an?

Don’t be: the country offers a multitude of alternatives. China, after all, counted 557 emperors or empresses over three millennia, so the modern-day visitor can explore many a notable palace, tomb or temple relatively free from the masses.

On a recent trip to the Middle Kingdom, we chose to visit Henan province, southwest of Beijing, in our bid to stray from the usual tourist trail. Not that we expected much solitude: the province is home to some 95 million people, squeezed into an area smaller than Victoria.

Still, Henan hosts four of China’s eight ancient capitals within relatively easy reach of Beijing, so we were confident of discovering some interesting history.

Two of those great centres, Luoyang and Kaifeng, are certainly worth a look. The former boasts the huge Longmen Buddhist statues, while the latter offers appealing Song dynasty palaces and lakes.

The highlight of our journey, though, was to a little-visited treasure between the two cities, the Shikusi, or Stone Grottoes Temple.

This relatively obscure destination is, in fact, just a short detour through cornfields off a major expressway near the city of Gongyi. On the day of our visit, we were virtually alone, save for friendly and knowledgeable guides (having a translator, though, is recommended).

The attraction includes beautiful Buddhist statues and friezes, carved out of the region’s low hills during the short-lived Northern Wei dynasty. At the time, some 15 centuries ago, Buddhism was just dislodging Taoism as the court religion in China, achieving a status that it held more or less until 1911 (some might say Buddhism is elbowing Communism aside to reclaim its former dominance in today’s China).

As we approached the first of the five main caves, our guides explained the cruder stonework on display where French and Japanese looters plundered some of the statues.

Fortunately, the remaining site has weathered the elements and political upheavals down the eons relatively well. The exquisite Buddhas and scenes of court life and pilgrimage luckily managed to survive the Communist ravages of the 1966-76 (anti-) Cultural Revolution mostly intact.

Inside the caves, eyes are naturally drawn upward to the calming features of the smiling Buddhas. We were just as impressed, though, by the flowing robes at the base of one statue – so lifelike and yet shaped from solid rock.

Our attention then settled on a pair of floating apsaras – celestial nymphs – of particular beauty. The two images now grace covers of Chinese art history books and are copied in textile designs – even neck-ties. Yet few Chinese have laid eyes on the originals.

The many elegant friezes are another stunning drawcard. Plump emperors and empresses, replete with full retinues of guards and servants, march in devout pilgrimage. Traces of the original paint can still be seen, hinting at the carvings’ once vibrant colours.

Other caves feature thousands of miniature Buddhas, ornate ceilings and floors (especially in the fifth cave, normally closed to the public), and some unusual features, such as a “two-faced Buddha”.

No wonder, then, that Shikusi served as a model for the super-sized Buddhas at Luoyang’s world-famous (and more touristy) Longmen caves. (One Sydney-based connoisseur familiar with Shikusi favours it over Luoyang and other famous Buddhist statues at Datong.)

Before leaving Gongyi, visitors should ask to inspect the rows of statues guarding the tomb of a former Wei emperor’s concubine – clearly a favourite, given the size and beauty of the stonework.

Gongyi’s local museum is also worth a brief stop. The exhibits range from the Neolithic to the Tang and up to the Qing dynasty. At the time of our visit, the museum’s top floor was devoted to contemporary rubbings of both the Shikusi grottoes and the concubine’s ‘guards.’

The rubbings themselves aren’t difficult to produce – our nine year-old daughter got to try it – but the effect can still be arresting. The process turns out two-dimension renditions of finely worked three-dimensional carvings that can become an art form in their own right.

An’yang

Before leaving the region, we stopped off an An’yang, a city probably more famous today for its mammoth steelworks but once capital to China’s first confirmed dynasty, the Shang.

Like Gongyi, An’yang probably won’t make it on to many travellers’ itineraries – also a pity, but for quite different reasons.

Anyang happens to be home to some of China’s legendary construction binge. The rows of housing blocks and government edifices being thrown up at a frenetic pace also hint at the equally frantic recovery works by archaeologists, salvaging what they can before the reinforced concrete seals the relics for ever.

We were lucky to join a new form of Chinese tourism – connoisseurs who supplement archaeologists’ meagre salaries by paying for private inspections of recently unearthed treasures.

We got to handle bronze and jade artefacts from the Shang, as well as some of the famous oracle bones used to divine the future almost 3000 years ago. We also wandered through storage rooms where ancient pottery shards await reconstruction and cataloguing.

An’yang is home to several grand museums, such as one devoted to Chinese characters. There you can experience, among other things, a “4-D” cinema that squirts water, puffs air, and rattles the seats to earn the extra dimension.

The World Heritage-listed Yinxu museum, though, is An’yang’s must-see attraction even if the entry cost (about $15 an adult) left us almost solitary visitors on a recent week-day afternoon.

As part of a 30-square-kilometer area, Yinxu in fact marks the centre of China’s largest archaeological site.

Among other achievements, the Shang became masters of bronze, giving them a military advantage. On display in the museum, for instance, are some gruesome rites inflicted by the Shang. Apparently they had it in for one Southern tribe and turned to them whenever human sacrifices were called for to appease the gods.

One less harsh Shang tradition has continued down to today – as one of the images shows. The original form of the Chinese character for teaching – jiao – is composed of a child doing mathematics while dad hovers, holding a big stick.

With that sobering discovery, we then boarded the inevitably overcrowded train – complete with an old lady crouched in the luggage rack – for a high-speed journey back to congested Beijing.

Henan’s major cities, particularly the provincial capital Zhengzhou, are within easy reach by air from gateway cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. There’s also a Zhengzhou-Beijing high-speed rail link.  Gongyi is about midway between Zhengzhou and Luoyang, and can be reached by rail, bus and car. High-speed rail travellers heading to back to Beijing from Zhengzhou can stop off at Anyang on the way.

Lijiang, a historical city, looks to be turned into an attractive gateway for travellers when visiting Yunnan And as usual in China, the city has a strong will to turn its ambitions into a big success.

LIJIANG- Lijiang is one of the most attractive tourist destinations in China. Populated by ethnics close from Laotian origins, the city carries a very strong historical character with its 800-year old houses. Many of them have been converted into boutique hotels with a very distinctive charm. Local traditions are very similar to the ones existing in Tibet as Lijiang’s main living ethnics, the Naxi, are originated from that region.

The city located in the Northwestern part of Yunnan province lies on the slopes of a mountain which gives the urban centre its very distinctive character. In 1997, UNESCO inscribed Lijiang into the World Heritage List justifying its choice with the following description: “Lijiang is an exceptional ancient town set in a dramatic landscape which represents the harmonious fusion of different cultural traditions to produce an urban landscape of outstanding quality”.

The city has still to get more awareness from travellers which include convenient air connections. Lijiang is exclusively linked for now to China, with flights to 12 cities including two major connecting hubs such as Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Kunming. Since the end of May, Sichuan Airlines also opened the first direct flight to Hong Kong on May 31, operating three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), allowing passengers to avoid a transit via Kunming and a long eight-hour ride on a bus from Yunnan capital.

Since March of this year, Lijiang airport was approved to operate as a hub airport, the third in the province after Kunming and Xishuangbanna (Jinghong). The city started planning to get new international flights. That would include in priority Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore. Discussions were recently hold with Thai and Korean authorities about the possible opening of new routes.  The tourist city would like to be turn into a mini hub to other UNESCO world heritage sites with new flights connecting Lijiang to five other UNESCO-listed destinations in China, such as Huangshan Mountain, Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie, Guilin and the Pingyao Old Town.

Talking to local media, Yang Chengxin, a senior official of the Lijiang government, said the city will improve facilities supporting the Lijiang airport and open more domestic and international flights to make Yunnan into Southeast Asia’s gateway. Lijiang airport, which expanded recently to become the second largest airport of the province, can accommodate 4.5 million passengers a year, following the completion of expansion work in 2007. The airport was opened to commercial  operation in July 1995.From less than 20,000 passengers in 1995 the number of passengers has grown to surpass two million last year.

By 2015, Lijiang airport plans to have more than 35 domestic routes and at least five international routes, local officials said. And the airport will transport more than 4 million tourists, including more than 400,000 foreign tourists.

The old town of Lijiang, was formally licensed in 2011 as the national 5A tourism attraction spot, the top one among China’s tourism ranking system, on July 27, 2011. During the first six months of 2012, news agency Xinhua reports that a total of 8.1 million visitors arrived in the city, an increase of 56% over 2011. The tourism industry’s revenue of the same period reached US$ 1.634 billion, growing also by 56%.

By Brittany Hite

Great Leap Brewing
Yunnan Amber, China’s first collaborative craft beer

As China’s craft beer market begins to take flight, two brewers have teamed up to produce the country’s first collaborative craft beer: Yunnan Amber, a beer that infuses southwestern Yunnan province’s dianhong black tea with domestic and imported hops.

Carl Setzer of Beijing’s Great Leap Brewing joined forces with Michael Jordan of Shanghai’s Boxing Cat Brewery after they both attended San Diego’s Craft Brewing Conference last May. “Carl and I have known each other for a while, as the brewing circles in China are pretty small,” Mr. Jordan said. “We saw these collaboration brews happening between U.S. brewers and decided we should do one ourselves.”

Great Leap Brewing
Beijing’s Great Leap Brewing

The pair began trading ideas, recipes and brewing techniques and eventually chose to make an amber — an ale that is amber or reddish in color — because it was a style of beer both brewers were familiar with producing. They also checked in with a Beijing-based tea consultant, who recommended that they infuse it with dianhong tea, a strong-flavored, red-hued black tea whose floral aroma some liken to tea from India’s Assam region. Mr. Setzer noted that the tea is  ”distinct enough to come through all the other flavors in the beer.”

When the time came to start brewing, Mr. Setzer traveled to Shanghai, where he and Mr. Jordan worked on their new creation at Boxing Cat’s brewing facility. Mr. Setzer already had two years’ experience working with tea in beer – something Mr. Jordan wanted to learn more about — and together they employed a process in which they steeped the beer in the tea for five days.

The duo brewed 1,000 liters of the limited-edition amber, which is currently available at Boxing Cat for the next six to eight weeks and was yesterday launched at Great Leap, where it will be served for about two weeks or as long as supplies last.

Though some might be skeptical of tea-infused beers, Mr. Jordan says the result is smooth and drinkable, with light hops that “allow the tea to come through” and a “floral presence in the finish.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Setzer said the beer “achieves exactly what we wanted. It has very distinct characteristics of Boxing Cat style, with Great Leap aspects as well.”

He added, “We’re able to bring a little bit of Great Leap to Shanghai, and a little bit of Boxing Cat to Beijing.”

As for what’s next, the two plan to team up again in the future. They’re already eyeing a collaboration beer each season, and say that they’re always on the lookout to collaborate with other craft brewers.

They do have one proviso, however.

“If you’re not friends, you will not collaborate well,” Mr. Setzer said. “It’s like having too many chefs in kitchen.”

Follow Brittany Hite on Twitter @brittanyhite