Your blog to China
These amazing buildings are called Diaolou. They are found exclusively in the vicinity of Kaiping in China’s Guangdong Province.
During the coming weeks and months we’ll be putting up information and photos of the various villages we visited around Kaiping. As well as plenty of other new China travel material.
The ancient town of Luocheng is a gem for those looking for traditional teahouse culture. Luocheng is renowned for its boat architecture: the two sides of its main street narrow down at both ends and widen gradually towards the middle, thus creating the oval shape of a boat.
Straddling the street and forming, as it were, the prow to complete the boat- like appearance of the town, stands a beautifully restored theatre. It is covered in traditional grey tiles and flamboyantly decorated with historic scenes and smiling Buddhas.
However, the absolute highlight of Luocheng is the swell of teahouses lining the main street, sheltered by the overhanging wooden porticos of the buildings. Overlooking this sea of bamboo tables and chairs, occupied by querulous old men in faded Mao jackets, arguing over heated games of cards or Mah-jong, while smoking small stubby pipes carved out of roots, visitors can truly imagine themselves in a time warp.
Joining the regulars over a cup of tea, you can really get an impression of what village life must have been like in the old days. The whole place still oozes authenticity and atmosphere; two elements that are often lacking in many of China’s more popular historical places. In fact, with the exception of the stray backpacker, you are unlikely to meet many fellow-travellers while exploring the streets of this sleepy town. Luocheng is as yet firmly off the tour group circuit.
Continue reading “Luocheng: Is This The World’s Best Teahouse Town?”
Curso de chino mandarin en Madrid 2013/2014
Como todos los años el CSIM (Centro Superior de Idioma Modernas) te ofrecen cursos de chino en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Las fechas son del 14 de octobre 2013 hasta el 31 de mayo 2014: 3 horas semanales. Todo/as los profesores son licenciadas y con ampliar experiencia en impartir clases de chino. Para mas informacion clic haz clic en este enlace: http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/idiomas/cursos/generales.htm
Sangzi Village Hunan Province: And I thought my Journey to class was bad. I’d always complained about my journey to work at the University in Madrid. Everyday, having to face the over-crowded underground transporting its cargo of stressed out passengers. Sweaty and smelly in the summer; germ infested in the winter; it’s standing room only most days. Compounding the misery, there are the strikes and demonstrations, that might delay your journey by up to an hour (and Madrid has one of the world’s best underground systems). Then I saw this video and since then I have I gone into Zen mode. I don’t moan or complain anymore.
I just say to myself how lucky I am. My gripes were nothing more than that of a privileged urbanite who has no idea as to what lengths other people have to go to in order to get an education.
It’s an amazing short video.
See in English:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9FqEfznQAQ
This video is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. The pictures show violence, mutilation, dismembering, and torture. This is the Buddhist Hell; not a pleasant place to spend the rest of your days. The photos were taken in various temples around China, Tibetan areas in China, and in the Dai Minority area of Xishuangbanna.
I must admit that I find the images mesmerizing. Maybe it is some morbid fascination that I have. Or maybe it is because they are so different to what we see in Europe. All I know is that when I enter a temple with these images I can’t stop snapping.
One of the things that sticks in my mind the most is the young monks in the Octagonal Pavillion in Jingzhen, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province, happily laughing and smiling while painting these grisly images.
The music is by the Chinese punk band Underbaby 地下婴儿and the song is called Everything is the same 都一样。Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnEF3D9NKQ0
Zhang Yimou’s new film on the massacre in Nanjing, Flowers of War (金陵十三钗), is the second major Chinese production to hit international cinemas on this topic in the last few years, the other being Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death (南京 南京). Having now seen both, I’ll try to compare and contrast them.
Both films are set during the early days of the Japanese conquest and occupation of Nanjing (南京) in 1937; Nanjing which was then the capital of the Republic of China. It was during this period that the Japanese committed the atrocities that were to become known as the “The Rape of Nanjing”. It is estimated that over 300,000 people were killed and thousands of women raped.
Filmed in black and white, Lu Chuan’s film conveys all the horrors and brutality of the destruction of Nanjing and its people under the Japanese occupation. Grey scene after scene, tense, gripping, and harrowing scene after scene, the spectator is left numb by the cruelty meted out by the Japanese army. The scene where the Japanese machine guns kill off the Chinese prisoners of war is horrific; yet, it represents the true events that took place on December 18, 1937, on the banks of the Yangtze River.
Nonetheless, in spite of the gruesomeness of his film, Lu Chuan was heavily criticized in China for showing the human face of (some of) the Japanese. At the end of the film, the young Japanese soldier Kadokawa is overwhelmed and tortured by shame and remorse for what his fellow countrymen have been doing in Nanjing. Apparently, Kadokawa’s show of feeling contradicted the Chinese Government’s official version that each and every Japanese soldier in Nanjing was nothing less than an unrepentant and murderous rapist. Lu Chuan, apparently, even received death threats for having shown this side of the conflict. However, despite this one slight tilt towards showing some kind of Japanese humanism in Nanjing, I must admit that the Japanese still come out of this film looking pretty bad, for want of saying anything stronger.
Continue reading “Flowers of War & City of Life and Death”Langde Miao Village (Video Slideshow) 郎德苗村 Guizhou Province: We hope you enjoy this video slide-show. The photos were taken in the Miao Minority village, Langde near Kaili in 2007. The accompanying songs are traditional Miao folk songs with modern music (again the slide-show is a bit too long: I promise to get the videos down to about 3 minutes in the future). For more information about Langde and how to get there: Continue reading below the video.
Langde was once the centre of an important Miao uprising against the Qing, which took place in the 19th Century. These days the village of Langde suffers a different kind of Han invasion; that of hundreds of Han tourists, coming to get a feel what has been marketed as exotic Miao culture. Nowadays, Chinese tourists take part in traditional singing and dancing events and marvel at the elaborate dresses and jewellery of the residents of Langde. How things have changed!
For the traveller Langde is still a great village to visit. Its setting is idyllic, built on a green hill overlooking an elegant slow bend in the river. Rice fields and wandering water buffalo add to the rural charm. The village itself is a classic collection of traditional Miao two or three-storey wooden buildings, draped in strings of drying chillies and corn.
We were visiting in the middle of August and spent almost the entire day in and around the village. In all that time only two small buses of Chinese tourists turned up. Actually, in a contradictory sense you need a tour group to turn up if you want to see the residents wearing their traditional clothing and jewellery. They don’t wear them when they are tending to the fields or their livestock, or when an individual backpacker turns up.
Continue reading “Langde Miao Village”Danba 丹巴 Festival Holachina’s first video: This is our first holachina slideshow video. The photos were taken during the preparations for the Danba 丹巴Festival August 2004. Danba is a small town in Western Sichuan about a 3 hour Bus ride from Kanding 康定. The town itself is small and scruffy but its setting, nestled in a deep valley at the confluence of two rushing rivers and surrounded by traditional Qiang (a Tibetan minority) villages, makes it quite idyllic.
The highlights include stunning villages, such as Jiaju 甲居藏寨 and Badi (not Baidi as I have written in the video) and the Qiang watchtowers peppered on the slopes of the steep valleys.
The year we visited Danba there were very few other foreigners and no domestic tourists. The following year, 2005, the Chinese National Geographic claimed that Jiaju village 甲居藏寨 (7kms from Danba) was the most beautiful village in China. Since then its popularity among travelers, foreign and Chinese alike, has grown rapidly.
We hope you enjoy the slideshow. Some people may find the music a bit painful. It’s the same music that was being played on the VCD’s on all the buses we sat on during our trip around Western Sichuan in 2004 and it brings back great memories.
If you are interested in going to Danba, Expect there to be a much bigger selection of hotels and restaurants now than when we were there in 2004..
Continue reading “Danba 丹巴 Festival Holachina’s first video”
Dream of Ding village by Yan Lianke: The book is set in Henan province, central China, around the city of Kaifeng, during the early to mid-1990s.
“They dug me up so they could take me to Kaifeng and bury me next to my dead wife. “ (Page 310).
Kaifeng, situated in China’s Henan province on the banks of the Yellow river, once served as the Song dynasty capital (then known as Bianjing (汴京). It may have been the world’s biggest city between 1013 and 1127. Much of its imperial splendor has been lost to the ravages of war, floods and rebellion. However, it still retains one of the few remaining landmarks from that time, the magnificent Iron Pagoda (铁塔), built in 1049.
Another of its treasures is the incredible Qingming Scroll, painted by Song dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan (1085 – 1145), which captures the daily life of people from the epoch at the ancient capital, Bianjing; today’s Kaifeng.
Modern day Kaifeng is a pleasant city to visit, with lively night markets, interesting temples and pagodas and the added lure of finding traces of China’s tiny Jewish community. Huge skyscrapers, ubiquitous in most Chinese cities, are conspicuous by their absence: due to the wealth of ancient ruins and relics still buried under the ground, the digging of deep foundations is prohibited.
Strolling around sleepy Kaifeng, it is hard to believe that the villages and surrounding counties hide a dark secret that very few visitors will see, or even know about. In fact, any attempt by a foreigner to visit these places will immediately arouse the suspicions of local police and the security bureau. What are they hiding?
Two days in Langzhong Ancient City: This small town, with a big history, is situated on the banks of the Jialing River, some 225 kilometres from Chengdu (Sichuan Province). It is all at once the burial place of the Three Kingdoms general, Zhang Fei, birthplace of the Han dynasty inventor of the Chinese Calendar, Luo Xiahong, and home to a wealth of traditional Sichuan architecture.
In short, Langzhong has plenty of things to see and do to keep a visitor busy for two days.
Your first priority on arrival is to find accommodation in one of the many traditional family mansions that are situated in the heart of the old city.
Continue reading “Two days in Langzhong Ancient City”