Is Overseas Relocation The Way to Salvage China''''s Ancient Houses?

A 200-year-old greater ancient teahouse called Cuipingju in Shitai County, Anhui Province, was scheduled to be sold to a Swedish businessman for 200,000 yuan, as the owner was financially overburdened for the routine maintenance of the property. But after intensive media coverage of the deal in early July, the local government immediately identified Cuipingju as a cultural relic and the sale was canceled.     

A Time-Honored Brew

Turak Mamatimin, 58, rode a dozen kilo-meters on his scooter from the suburbs to downtown Kashgar, a historic city in north-west China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, to have a cup of tea as part of his usual routine. He has been making the same journey to the same teahouse for 50 years with only one difference. He used to make the trip via donkey.     

Retired Life

As Hong Kong inhabitants have a sense of privacy and their living space is often limited, they seldom invite people to their homes. The teahouse is the most popular meeting place. Our interview with Tsui Chee, however, was at his homeMEI Foo Sun Chuen, Hong Kong's first private residential subdistrict in Lai Chi Kok, was built in 1968. It epitomized a well off society where middle-class people, such as Tsui Chee and his family, moved in the 1970s, to live in compact communities. Tsui Chee's apartment has an area of more than 80 square meters. It is furnished in a manner similar to that of a mainland household, other than the altar left of the entrance, where devotions to deities and ancestors are made. As the principles of fengshui are commonly observed in Hong Kong, the position of the altar in the household is decided by geomancers. Hong Kong people visit temples to worship deities and also to draw bamboo slips out of a pot for divination purposes. Geomancers are employed to determine the most auspicious location of new companies and suitable layouts of houses being considered for purchase.     

Still Brewing

Tea culture and China are synonymous, but even old-style teahouses have to change with the times Xinquan Tea House is filled with old men who seemingly have known each other for years. They share unrestrained and far-ranging conversations on topics that range from tea ceremony culture to how to sort out all the world's troubles. Situated in De'nei Dajie street in downtown Beijing, this teahouse is known as a qingchaguan (teahouse serving tea without     

Do You Have Chinese Gongfu?

Foreigners in ChinaAddress of teahouse: No. 53A, Dongdaqiao Road,Chaoyang District, Beijing.Tel: 65070487DO you havegongfu? A Chinese friend casually askedme one day.It was a question I'd never expected to hear outside of a Hong Kong movie. I almost expected Jackie Chan, or a band of warrior monks to suddenly leap from behind a shadow-shrouded bambooscreen. As itturned out, I didhave gougfu afterall, despite mylack of martial artstraining. The question is a way to seeif a friend has fr…     

The Water Diversion Project

One of the basic characteristics of water distribution in China is that there is a deluge of water in the south and a deficiency in the north. To ease the water shortage in the north, the Chinese Government     

Chinese Young Volunteers In Africa

The logo of the Chinese young volunteer services is a hand in the shape of a heart, meaning extending a friendly hand to all those who need help. The Chinese young volunteers are not only active in providing services in all parts of China, but also in giving a helping hand to the rest of the world.The Chinese young volunteer overseas service programme, launched jointly by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) and the Chinese Young Volunteer Association in 2…     

A Cry for Help

Rescue of newborn trapped in sewer becomes clarion call for unwed mothers On the afternoon of May 25,the muffled cries of an infant echoed from the sewage drain of a public toilet on the fourth floor of a residential building in Pujiang County, east China’s Zhejiang Province.Police officers and firefighters jointly extracted the 2.3-kg newbom covered in sores and swiftly sent him to a local hospital.But how did he end up in the sewer? Who would abandon a baby boy in a toilet?Police identified the baby’s mother as a 22-year-old woman with the pseudonym Xiaofei who lived in a nearby apartment,but she was initially reluctant to admit     

A GLOBAL CONSENSUS Common values bring China closer to the world

正Historians of the future will probably define the year 2017 as a watershed moment in the development of globalization and the first year in the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.At the beginning of the year,when Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech at the opening session of the World Economic Forum Annual     

Quake-stricken Qiang Community Back to Normal

Tmade my first visit to Luobozhal, a village of the Qiang ethnic minority near Wenchuan, the epicenter of the 2008 earthquake, in a mid March snowstorm in 2009. Cloaked in glaring white and thick in deadly silence, the region with the romantic nickname ＂village above clouds＂ （for its altitude of 1,950 meters above sea level） remained in a complete shambles from the disaster a year before. In makeshift shanties, its people coped with the inconveniences of a make-do daily life while grap-pling at every moment with a persistent and instinctive mourning for the loss of their loved ones and ancestral homes.     

The Middle Dinosaur Kingdom

Dinosaur fossils have been periodically unearthed in various parts of China for more than a century. In 2006, the fossils of the Stegosaur that bear the largest scapulars ever excavated, and of the Mamenchisaurus (the longest dinosaur in Asia) were discovered in Xinjiang. The same year there was a world f irst discovery of fossils of the Dicraeosaurus (a kind of di- plodocoidea) in Lingwu City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The amount of dinosaur fossils discovered in China by 2006 was 1…     

Upgrading Western Development

正China unveils new guideline on western development to enhance opening up,innovation in the region Chinese policymakers on May 17 issued a guideline on advancing the new pattern of western development in the new era,which calls for winning the"three tough battles'against major risks,poverty and environmental pollution,improving innovation capability and building a modern industrial system in the country's western region.The development of the western region remains unbalanced and inadequate and lags far behind the eastern region,making it arduous to further reduce poverty.The western region is still a weak link in completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieving socialist modernization,the guideline says.The guideline requires a notable improvement in ecological,business and innovation environment as well as opening up of the western region by 2020 and the completion of the building of a moderately prosperous society in     

Report on the Work of the Executive Committee of the Ninth National Council of CPAFFC (Excerpts)

Since the convening of its Ninth National Council Meeting in May 2007, the CPAFFC, taking full-scale promotion of people-to-people diplomacy as the focus of its work and constantly seeking innovation, has advanced with the times, planned in a scientific way and played a positive role in the country’s endeavor to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects. The four main aspects of its work in the past five years can be     

One Community in Cyberspace

The season of the fragrant osmanthus is also the time for Wuzhen,a picturesque river town in Zhejiang Province in east China,to welcome its annual moment in the spotlight Once regarded as a land of rice and fish and the home of Chinese silk,the ancient town with more than 6,000 years of history has been given a new name by the media—the future of the Internet.     

An Unforgettable Trip to Nepal

When it was still cold winder in Beijing in February, spring was in the air in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal at the foot of the world's most imposing mountains-the Himalayas. It was in such a pleasant season that a CPAFFC delegation led by its vice president Wang Yunze paid a 4-day friendly visit to Nepal at the invitation of the Nepal Arniko Society.     

Common Prosperity

"Guilin's scenery is the best in the world." This is a popular Chinese saying in praise of the beauty of Guilin, a city in China's     

Northern Guizhou：APast Relived

Alarge quantity of well preserved fossils of pre-historic marine life have been found .in the strata of the mountainous region in Guanling National Geopark in Guizhou Province. ＂It looks like their cemetery,＂ commented Zhang Dapeng, curator of the geopark museum, pointing to the staggered array of quiet mountains in the distance that houses their graves. But that＇s a gloomy view of a geopark that in fact sparks a lot of delight, pride, and some controversy as well.     

Crickets Extraordinaire

AN elderly man enters the main hall of the Impe-rial Palace in Beijing and, under the eyes of a (a curious young Chinese pioneer, takes from be- neaththegoldenthroneasmall,dustyboxwith a holes punctured in its lid and presses it to his ear. This is one of the closing scenes of the remarkable movie in The Last Emperor by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci. The w old man dressed in the Sun Yatsen suit is Pu Yi, last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, who at the age of three was enthroned in th…     

Hong Kong in Photos

正On the midnight of June 30, 1997,China's national flag was slowly hoisted to the top of a pole in a highprofile handover ceremony in Hong Kong, marking its return to the motherland after 156 years of British rule. As a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong has since ushered in a new chapter in development under the principles of "one country,twosystems"and"Hong Kong people ruling HongKong"with a high degree of autonomy.