2010 Shanghai World Expo

500 bilingual teachers from Xinjiang to undergo training in inland China

A total of 500 ethnic minority teachers from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region will be dispatched to universities in inland China for a one-year training program that is designed to train more bilingual teachers and boost educational quality in the region, according to regional educational authorities. In addition, 225 of the region’s Chinese teachers, along with 60 elementary and secondary school headmasters, have been sent to universities in the municipalities of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, as well as Jiangsu Province, for the purpose of undergoing training or taking up temporary posts in elementary and secondary schools, according to the region’s education department.

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Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa cancels appearances until 2012

Japanese orchestral conductor Seiji Ozawa has cancelled appearances until January next year due to health problems, media reported Tuesday.

“I hope we shall soon be back on our feet,” he told the Austrian newspaper Oesterreich, speaking by telephone from his home near Tokyo after living through the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear alert.

In January, media reports said Ozawa would take a complete break from conducting for six months to recover from lower back surgery.

He had planned to make his return at Matsumoto in central Japan for the Saito Kinen Festival, but will have to wait until January 2012 at the earliest as result of a pulmonary infection and a hernia.

“That’s why I have had to cancel all my concerts again, until January 2012,” he told the newspaper, but “I shall be back – that’s for sure.”

Music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1973-02, the 75-year-old musician underwent an endoscopic lower back operation in January to treat chronicle lower back pain.

He was diagnosed with oesophogeal cancer in January 2010 and completed treatment by August.

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Six methods of cooking duck in China

Peking roast duck

Peking Duck, or Peking Roast Duck is a famous duck dish from Beijing that has been prepared since the imperial era, and is now considered one of China’s deluxe foods.

The dish is prized for its thin and crispy skin. Ducks bred especially for the dish are slaughtered after 65 days and seasoned before being roasted in a closed or hung oven. The meat is eaten with pancakes, spring onions, and hoisin sauce or sweet bean sauce. The two most notable restaurants in Beijing which serve this delicacy are Quanjude and Bianyifang, two centuries-old establishments that have become household names.

Nanjing salted duck

Nanjing salted duck is a famous specialty in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. It is famous for its white skin and tender meat, and rich in flavor but not too greasy. The salted duck around the Mid-autumn Festival tastes best as it is seasoned with osmanthus, thus it has another name “osmanthus duck”.

Hunan spicy salted duck

Hunan spicy salted duck is a famous dish in Yiyang city, Hunan Province. It selects the local unique duck, soaked in more than 30 precious traditional Chinese medicines and over 10 spices, through 15 processes such as airing and baking. The delicacy is eye-catching in dark red, fragrant in sauce taste and highly nutritious. It can be served in a banquet as well as goes with wine.

Wuhan duck neck

Wuhan duck refers to several dishes from the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province. The dishes are specific parts of a duck, including the tongue, head, feet, liver, kidney, and most popularly, the neck, often referred to as “spicy duck neck”. Common to all of these dishes is the color, a deep reddish-brown, and the extremely spicy flavor. These items are sold in numerous provinces throughout China.

Fujian Jiangmu duck

In Fujian, especially in Xiamen, people like to cook Jiangmu duck. It is a good winter dish which can dispel dampness and coldness. People cooking to the duck first soak it in rice wine and then braise it in the clay pot with Chinese herbs and old ginger for about two hours. The duck goes well with rice and beer.

Sichuan tea smoked duck

Also known as Zhangcha duck, Sichuan tea smoked duck tastes no inferior to Peking roast duck. It is one of the classic Sichuan dishes. The duck is hot smoked over the twigs of camphor plant and tea leaves.

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Lantern Festival lights up spring

Lantern Festival

Yuanxiao Jie, or the Lantern Festival, that falls on the 15th day of the first month of the Chinese New Year (Feb 17 this year), signals the end of the Spring Festival celebrations.

Calendar Scrolls, a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) silk scroll, 175 cm long and 95 cm wide, offers a glimpse of how the festival was celebrated at least 200 years ago, with its image replicated on countless paintings and calendars. Widely believed to be a collaborative work of Tang Dai (1673-1752) and his contemporaries such as Ding Guanpeng, the original is in the collection of the Palace Museum in Taipei and depicts daily life in 18th century China.

Tang Dai was a Manchu landscape painter who lived under Qing emperor Kangxi, while Ding is best known for his vivid depiction of Buddhist figures.

Tang’s ink painting techniques were so highly respected that he was crowned painting maestro by the emperor.

His depictions of people, residences, shops, temples, and gardens reflect his intimate knowledge and love of traditional Chinese festivals. The influence of Western art on the Qing imperial court is evident, says Jin Yunchang, a researcher of ink painting with the Palace Museum in Beijing.

Offering a panoramic view of the royal gardens, the scroll shows large groups of people in brightly-colored clothes, watching the moon, setting off fireworks, hanging lanterns, cracking riddles while drinking liquor and enjoying sweet-meats, surrounded by blossoming peach trees that herald the coming of spring.

Jubilant scenes of singing and dancing dot the scroll.

Like in the olden days, putting up colorful lanterns remains an integral part of the festivities to this day. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), the emperors were followers of Buddhism, and ordered the worship of Buddha with grand lanterns on this occasion.

For the emperor’s pleasure, county magistrates in different parts of the empire would dispatch hand-made lanterns to the royal court.

Soon the tradition passed on to common folk, and lanterns could be found everywhere during the festival.

It is said the festive atmosphere created by these lanterns was so irresistible that the royal couple would often sneak out of the palace dressed as commoners to celebrate the festival.

Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), was reportedly such a big fan of the lantern festival that he extended the period of celebrations from three days as in the Tang (AD 618-907) and Song (AD 960-1279) dynasties, to 10 days.

Lantern riddles were perhaps the best-loved parts of the celebrations. Riddles were pasted onto the lanterns, so people could watch the lanterns while cracking them.

The festival is also dubbed China’s Valentine’s Day. Traditionally, for unmarried young girls who were not allowed to go out freely, the lantern festival was their opportunity to pick their spouses.

In Taiwan, a traditional belief still holds sway that unmarried girls can snare a good husband if they steal a green vegetable during the night of the festival.

The festival was also an occasion to showcase traditional beliefs, such as having women walk along a wall or across a bridge to keep diseases and disasters at bay.

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Kids sleeping enough have less chance of being obese

A new research shows children with enough sleep would have less chance to be obese, according to the journal Pediatrics on Tuesday.

Researchers in University of Chicago monitored the sleep patterns of about 300 young children for seven days, and found that only a few slept the amount the National Sleep Foundation recommended – over 10 hours a day.

Most of the children observed slept only eight hours. However, those children in obesity not only slept less, but also more irregularly.

“Children who had the most irregualr sleep patterns had the most risk of being obese,” said professor David Gozal of the research team.

Kids who made up lost sleep during the weekends were less likely to get weight comparing to those who did not have the compensation, the research found.

Although children who have compensation on the weekends have less chance of being obese, the best piece of advice is still that children sleep regularly and enough hours, the research adds.

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Celebrity quotes for Woman

1 A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes. — Joseph Addison

2 I married beneath me. All women do. — Lady Nancy Astor, attributed

3 The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing — and then marry him. — Cher

4 Women: If they’re not turning down your proposals for marriage, they’re accusing you of suspicious behavior in the women’s lingerie changing room. — Cliff Clavin, character on “Cheers”, U.S. Television show

5 Heav’n hath no rage like love to hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d. — William Congreve

6 Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences. — Isadora Duncan

7 All women are born evil. Some just realize their potential later in life than others. — Chad A. Gamble, Escape, short story

8 There is nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can’t set it right in the course of an afternoon. — Giraudoux

9 The society of women is the element of good manners. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

10 Jake liked his women the way he liked his kiwi fruit: sweet yet tart, firm-fleshed yet yielding to the touch, and covered with short brown fuzzy hair. — Jonathan S. Haas

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The classical adage in English

1 Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.
2 Don’t put off till tomorrow what should be done today.　
3 Don’t put the cart before the horse.
4 Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.
5 Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
6 Do well and have well.
7 Each bird love to hear himself sing.
8 Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
9 Easier said than done.
10Easy come, easy go.

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Acute brain turn

 1. What will you break once you say it?    Silence.

2. Will liars be honest after they die?   No, they won’t. They lie still after they die。

3. What always goes up and never goes down?  Your age.

 4. Why did the boy make his dog sit in the sun?    He wants to have a hot dog. 

    5. Why can a bride hide nothing?   Because someone will give her away.
    6. Why is the library the highest building?    It has the most stories.

    7. What is the smallest bridge in the world?     The bridge of a nose. 

    8. What is the difference between the North Pole and the South Pole?     A whole world.

    9. What makes naughty boys long to work in a clock factory?     They want to make faces. 

    10. What bird lifts heavy things?  Crane.

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Wendy’s Every day–The Mid-autumn Festival

The Mid-autumn Festival

The joyous Mid-Autumn Festival, the third and last festival for the living, was celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, around the time of the autumn equinox. Many referred to it simply as the “Fifteenth of the Eighth Moon”. In the Western calendar, the day of the festival usually occurred sometime between the second week of September and the second week ofOctober.

This day was also considered a harvest festival since fruits, vegetables and grain had been harvested by this time and food was abundant. With delinquent accounts settled prior to the festival , it was a time for relaxation and celebration. Food offerings were placed on an altar set up in the courtyard. Apples, pears, peaches, grapes, pomegranates , melons, oranges and pomelos might be seen. Special foods for the festival included moon cakes, cooked taro, edible snails from the taro patches or rice paddies cooked with sweet basil, and water caltrope, a type of water chestnut resembling black buffalo horns. Some people insisted that cooked taro be included because at the time of creation, taro was the first food discovered at night in the moonlight. Of all these foods, it could not be omitted from the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The round moon cakes, measuring about three inches in diameter and one and a half inches in thickness, resembled Western fruitcakes in taste and consistency. These cakes were made with melon seeds, lotus seeds, almonds, minced meats, bean paste, orange peels and lard. A golden yolk from a salted duck egg was placed at the center of each cake, and the golden brown crust was decorated with symbols of the festival. Traditionally, thirteen moon cakes were piled in a pyramid to symbolize the thirteen moons of a “complete year,” that is, twelve moons plus one intercalary moon.

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Double Seventh Festival

The Double Seventh Festival, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, is a traditional festival full of romance. It often goes into August in the Gregorian calendar.

This festival is in mid-summer when the weather is warm and the grass and trees reveal their luxurious greens. At night when the sky is dotted with stars, and people can see the Milky Way spanning from the north to the south. On each bank of it is a bright star, which see each other from afar. They are the Cowherd and Weaver Maid, and about them there is a beautiful love story passed down from generation to generation.

Long, long ago, there was an honest and kind-hearted fellow named Niu Lang (Cowhand). His parents died when he was a child. Later he was driven out of his home by his sister-in-law. So he lived by himself herding cattle and farming. One day, a fairy from heaven Zhi Nu (Weaver Maid) fell in love with him and came down secretly to earth and married him. The cowhand farmed in the field and the Weaver Maid wove at home. They lived a happy life and gave birth to a boy and a girl. Unfortunately, the God of Heaven soon found out the fact and ordered the Queen Mother of the Western Heavens to bring the Weaver Maid back.

With the help of celestial cattle, the Cowhand flew to heaven with his son and daughter. At the time when he was about to catch up with his wife, the Queen Mother took off one of her gold hairpins and made a stroke. One billowy river appeared in front of the Cowhand. The Cowhand and Weaver Maid were separated on the two banks forever and could only feel their tears. Their loyalty to love touched magpies, so tens of thousands of magpies came to build a bridge for the Cowhand and Weaver Maid to meet each other. The Queen Mother was eventually moved and allowed them to meet each year on the 7th of the 7th lunar month. Hence their meeting date has been called “Qi Xi” (Double Seventh).

Scholars have shown the Double Seventh Festival originated from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD220). Historical documents from the Eastern Jin Dynasty (AD371-420) mention the festival, while records from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) depict the grand evening banquet of Emperor Taizong and his concubines. By the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties, special articles for the “Qi Xi” were seen being sold on markets in the capital. The bustling markets demonstrated the significance of the festival.

Today some traditional customs are still observed in rural areas of China, but have been weakened or diluted in urban cities. However, the legend of the Cowhand and Weaver Maid has taken root in the hearts of the people. In recent years, in particular, urban youths have celebrated it as Valentine’s Day in China. As a result, owners of flower shops, bars and stores are full of joy as they sell more commodities for love.

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