Archive for the ‘Modern China’ Category

China celebrates Qingming Festival

Saturday, April 7th, 2012

China has celebrated the Qingming Festival, when it’s traditional for people to pay tribute to their ancestors and the heroes who died serving their country.

In central China’s Henan Province holiday makers enjoyed some of these varied traditions at the 2012 Kaifeng Qingming Culture Festival. Kaifeng is closely linked to Qingming Festival, with the famous ancient painting “The Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festival” capturing life in the Northern Song capital of Bianjing, which is today’s Kaifeng.

In the Qingming River Garden, the bustling scene depicted on the scroll painting comes to life. There is also a model of the scene in the excellent Henan Museum in Zhengzhou which I visited on my trip to Beijing, Tianjin, and Zhengzhou in December 2010 – January 2011.

Wuhan-Shenzhen high-speed rail starts operation

Saturday, April 7th, 2012

The new high speed rail service between Wuhan and Shenzhen has commenced, with the entire trip taking only 4 hours and 13 minutes. The new line connects Wuhan to Guangzhou and Guangzhou to Shenzhen, and departs from the Shenzhen North Railway Station where there is a direct connection with the Shenzhen Metro. It makes it easy to visit Wuhan from Shenzhen, as well as other major places of interest such as Changsha.

2012 Spring Festival – watch the Festival Gala online

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

The oldest and most important festival in China is the Spring Festival, which marks the start of a new year on the lunar calendar. This year the Lunar New Year day was 23 January, and introduced the Year of the Dragon. Find out more in the CNTV Special Feature 2012 Spring Festival which includes online videos of the spectacular Spring Festival Gala.

Happy New Year from discoverchina.info!

Tai’er Zhuang Ancient Town

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

Tai’er Zhuang, a city in Shandong Province, is renowned for a successful campaign against the Japanese invaders in 1938. Now the city has a new tourism attraction – an Ancient Town. The Town has so far created 80,000 jobs and has helped raise the city from the least economically-active to the second most active one in the Province. Step inside and find out more in the CNTV Culture Express story Historic town reinvented in Shandong Province.

Touring Hebei’s revolutionary sites

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

In the China Daily life article Singing the praises of Xibaipo Mike Peters writes that a tour of the revolutionary sites of Hebei province ideally takes in Xibaipo Museum, an interactive guide to China’s civil war, Ranzhuang’s Underground Tunnel Museum account of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and the military base of Handan – leaving time for the attractions of Baiyangdian Lake and Goddess Nuwa’s Temple as a natural counterpoint to history.

In the further China Daily article The light at the end of the tunnels of war, Angela Shen writes that visiting the Underground Tunnel Museum in Ranzhuang is easily one of the most stimulating ways to experience China’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945).