The goal of life for a Taoist is to cultivate a mystical relationship to the Tao. Adherents therefore avoid dispersing their energies through the pursuit of wealth, power, or knowledge. By shunning every earthly distraction, the Taoist is able to concentrate on life itself.
The longer the adherent's life, the more saintly the person is presumed to have become. Eventually the hope is to become immortal. He lived in Ancient China during the Zhou Dynasty. Confucius was a government official, and during his lifetime he lived from to B.
Perhaps due to the turmoil and injustices he saw, he set himself to develop a new moral code based on respect, honesty, education, kindness and strong family bonds. His teachings later became the basis for religious and moral life throughout China. Confucius believed that a good government was the basis for a peaceful and happy society.
And the basis for a good government was good officials. Ren stands for Kindness to the fellow man. Xin stands for truthfulness, faithfulness and sincerity. Yi for righteousness or honesty, generosity of soul. Xiao for filial piety, for strong family values. It is often said that if you are in Beijing, there are essentially two things that you must do; one is to climb the Great Wall of China , and the other is to eat Peking Duck.
Once confined to the kitchens of the palace, the legendary Peking Duck is now served at thousands of restaurants around Beijing, as well as around the world. The origin of the Peking Duck dates back to the Ming Dynasty, about years ago.
Cooks from all over China travelled to the capital Beijing to cook for the Emperor. It was a prestigious occupation as only the best chefs could enter the palace kitchens. A top cook was even able to reach the rank of a minister! It was in these kitchens where dishes of exceptional quality such as the Peking Duck were first created and crafted to perfection by palace chefs. However, many of the recipes for such "foods of the Emperor" were later smuggled out of the kitchen and onto the streets of Beijing.
With the eventual fall of the Ching dynasty in , court chefs who left the Forbidden City set up restaurants around Beijing and brought Peking Duck and other delicious dishes to the masses. Jiangsu cuisine is characterized by its distinctive style, special taste, and unique cooking techniques, which makes it quite popular among chefs worldwide. For tasting authentic Jiangsu cuisine, if you are travelling around the region of the lower Yangtze river, make sure your trip includes trying dishes like Jinling salted dried duck, crystal meat pork heels in a brown sauce , clear crab shell meatballs, Yangzhou steamed Jerky strips, and triple combo duck.
Cantonese Cuisine, also known as Yue cuisine, is another major component for Chinese eight cuisines, which enjoys a long history and a good reputation both home and abroad. The most typical Cantonese dish is dim sum, bite-sized small hearty dishes, which are prepared with frying, steaming, stewing, and baking. Other Cantonese dishes like rice rolls, lotus leaf rice, turnip cakes, buns, shui jiao-style dumplings, stir-fried green vegetables, congee porridge, and soups are also quite popular among Cantonese cooks.
Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine, features hot and spicy flavor, fresh aromas, and deep color, which makes itself quite favorable among cooks. Xiang cuisine is commonly prepared with traditional cooking methods like stewing, frying, roasting, braising, and smoking.
The region of Hunan is blessed with diverse agricultural resources, which makes for a wide variety of ingredients to utilize. Zhejiang cuisine, commonly known as Zhe cuisine, is of the Eight Culinary Traditions of China, which is characterized by its non-greasy taste, soft flavor, and mellow fragrance.
Zhejiang cuisine is mainly composed of four styles, namely Hangzhou style, Shaoxing style, Ningbo style, and Shanghai style, each of which has its own ingredients. Hangzhou style is rich in bamboo shoots, Shaoxing style, freshwater fish, Ningbo style seafood, and Shanghai style dim sum.
With a rich history of more than 5, years, China enjoys many traditional festivals that you may encounter on a trip to China such as the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day Qingming Festival to the Dragon Festival and Mid-autumn Day, each with its own significance and features.
After learning about them, you will have a more well-rounded appreciation for Chinese culture. The Spring Festival is one of the most important festivals in China, which is from the first to the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar. About one month ahead of the Spring Festival, people will begin preparations for it, including cleaning house, shopping and cooking food in anticipation.
When celebrating the festival, people will hang red lanterns on doors, and set off firecrackers. Another important part of the Spring Festival is family reunions as people who live far away from home will return home to be with their families. In the following days, people will visit relatives and friends, and express their good wishes to the next year to each other. The last day, on the 15th day of the festival is the Lantern Festival. Since Spring Festival is a traditional Chinese festival, there are still some taboos about it.
During Spring Festival, unlucky behaviors and words should be avoided because it is believed bad things may happen if certain words are spoken. Moreover, water should not be sprinkled out of the house, which may bring bad luck to the new year. Also when holding fragile articles like plates, cups, and glasses, one should be particularly careful and never break them. In addition, different regions of China have their own taboos on the Spring Festival. Mid-autumn day, anther traditional festival in China, is celebrated on August 15th in the lunar calendar every year.
On the mid-autumn day, the full moon will appear, which symbolizes reunion in Chinese cultures, so the mid-autumn day is also called Reunion Festival. Since mid-autumn day is an important festival in China, there are some traditional customs for this festival. Moon worship is a quite time-honored tradition in China, which could be traced back to the Zhou dynasty in ancient Chinese history.
This tradition has been passed down from generation to generation. In modern times, people usually display moon cakes as well as other fruits on the table in the yard. The delicately-shaped moon cake is a must-have for the Mid-autumn Day, which is made of flour filled with various kinds of fillings like nuts, eggs, beans, and fruits.
Since full the moon symbolizes family reunion in Chinese reunion, moon cakes are usually round-shaped. That is why eating moon cakes on the mid-autumn day often makes some Chinese feel homesick. Lantern Festival is another important festival in China, which is celebrated on the 15th of the first month in the lunar calendar every year. The Lantern Festival marks the end of the Spring Festival. The Lantern Festival of falls on Tuesday February 19th. There are some traditional customs and activities for Lantern Festival, as well.
During the Lantern Festival, splendid lanterns shows are displayed and lanterns of different shapes can be seen everywhere, attracting no small amount of visitors.
Accompanying lanterns, various fireworks are lit, which explode into different shapes in the night sky. Guessing lantern riddles is another important part of the Lantern Festival. Each lantern contains a riddle which people will guess. If someone has an answer to a riddle, he can pull the paper from the lantern and ask the organizers to verify the answer.
If the answer is right, then little gifts would be awarded. Since this intellectual activity is very exciting and interesting, guessing riddles during the lantern festival is quite popular among many people, old and young, men and women.
Another common activity during the festival is the exciting folk dances, such as Lion Dance and Walking on the Stilts. The dancers perform coordinated and rhythmic steps and timed to the music of loud gongs and drums. Sometimes it jumps, sometimes it roars. Another representative folk dance during the Lantern Festival is walking on the stilts.
Dressed up gorgeously, the performers impersonate different animals, monks, clowns, fishermen and others. As for food, people usually eat ball-shaped sweet dumplings in this festival, also called Yuan xiao in Chinese, which is made of glutinous rice flour with different fillings. Hence, the Lantern Festival is also called Yuan xiao Festival. The Dragon Boat Festival, another traditional festival in China, falls on the May 5th in the lunar calendar every year, which is celebrated to commemorate an ancient patriotic poet named Qu Yuan.
Customs pertaining to this festival are:. China — Beijin. Since these were produced in large scale, the individual creators proved hard to track down. Perhaps the most well known form of Chinese art is Chinese ceramic ware. These are prolific because so many of the raw materials needed to make them are found in China. Other forms of Chinese art include calligraphy, sculpture bronze in particular , and various forms of painting.
The modern art scene is slowly gaining popularity, but there are very few galleries and art museums. Long ago, the most prominent material in Chinese architecture was timber. Timber was used as a framework, a method dating back to the 16th century. With the timber, they combined the carving of stone, earth removal and arches to create architectural masterpieces.
Many have been crafted from the back breaking efforts of industrious cheap labour, like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Art and architecture are both closely intertwined with Chinese culture.
China — Miao in her tribal dress. Like with many things in China, the colour red is an important part of traditional Chinese dress. It is also characterized by traditionally being made from silk.
Like arts and religion, their dress themes changed with the dynasties. Amongst the upper classes, only the Emperor was allowed to wear yellow. The quintessential image of traditional Chinese dress is the Cheongsam.
The dress is elegant without being too flamboyant and can be worn short or long in any season. It is commonly worn at weddings, with the bride in red. China is a country that is in love with food. Rice is not only a major food source in China; it is also a major element that helped grow their society, according to " Pathways to Asian Civilizations: Tracing the Origins and Spread of Rice and Rice Cultures ," an article in the journal Rice by Dorian Q.
The Chinese word for rice is fan , which also means "meal," and it is a staple of their diet, as are bean sprouts, cabbage and scallions.
Because they do not consume a lot of meat — occasionally pork or chicken — tofu is a main source of protein for the Chinese. Chinese art is greatly influenced by the country's rich spiritual and mystical history. Many sculptures and paintings depict spiritual figures of Buddhism, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many musical instruments are integral to Chinese culture, including the flute-like xun and the guqin, which is in the zither family.
Eastern-style martial arts were also developed in China, and it is the birthplace of kung fu. This fighting technique is based on animal movements and was created in the mids, according to Black Belt Magazine. Ancient Chinese were avid writers and philosophers — especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties — and that is reflected in the country's rich liturgical history.
Recently, archaeologists discovered detailed paintings in a 1,year-old tomb in China. China has invested large amounts of money in science advancements and currently challenges the United States in scientific research. One recent development in Chinese science is teleportation.
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