Silk – Part 1/2

September 6, 2010

I was reading an Associated Press piece by Mansur Mirovalev on Silk’s dark side about Uzbek children made to grow cocoons. If you are interested in that story, click the link.

Silkworms in a Chinese silk factory

However, that’s not what this post is about.  I will say this. I didn’t see much that was dark about what was taking place in Uzbekistan. About a century ago, American children once worked in the fields alongside their parents. I see nothing wrong with that. The Uzbek families not being paid is another matter.

Worker makes silk cloth from a silkworm.

I’ve often read about the Silk Road, but I was curious and wanted to know more about the history of silk so I did some virtual hunting.

Silk has a long history in China. In 1984, silk fabric dating back more than 5000 years was found in Henan Province.

How silk is made.

According to legend, Lei Zu, the queen of China’s legendary Yellow Emperor, was drinking a cup of tea beneath a mulberry tree one day when a silkworm cocoon fell into her cup. Further investigation revealed that the unraveling fibers were light and tough, ripe for spinning. Thus China’s silk industry was born.  Source: The History of Silk

What I didn’t know was that merchants from the Roman Empire sent ships by sea to China and traded directly with the Han Dynasty, which I’ll write about in Silk – Part 2.

See A Millennia of History at a Silk Road Oasis

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Links to the Stars – Ancient Astronomy – Part 2/2

September 5, 2010

The Milky Way Maid says that the (ancient) Chinese focused more on the constellations, creating one of the earliest star maps ever found.

Chinese astronomers gave distinctive names to familiar Western constellations. For example, the Big Dipper was called The Plow. The North Star was Bei Ji. Another constellation was called the Winnowing Basket.

From the 16th century B.C. to the end of the 19th Century A.D., almost every (Chinese) dynasty appointed officials who were charged with the sole task of observing and recording the changes in the heavens.

However, the Chinese were not alone in mapping the heavens. 

Ancient cultures in the West studied the skies too. The “Nebra Sky Disc”, discovered in Europe, dates to about 1,600 BC. 

National Geographic says the Nebra Sky Disc is the oldest depiction of the night sky in history.  It is a hundred years older than the oldest images found in ancient Egypt.

The Nebra Sky Disc may be the first representation of the universe in human history.

However, in China about 4,000 years ago, the oldest astronomical instrument known to man appeared. It was merely a bamboo pole planted in the ground so that the movement of the sun could be observed from the direction and length of the shadow of the pole. Source: China.org – Astronomy and Mathematics

Historians consider that the Chinese were the most persistent and accurate observers of celestial phenomena.

Return to Ancient Astronomy – Part 1 or discover Chinese inventions.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Links to the Stars – Ancient Astronomy – Part 1/2

September 5, 2010

For thousands of years, Chinese astronomers have studied the stars and planets moving in their endless travels across the night sky.

Oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty (1766 – 1122 B.C.) recorded eclipses and as many as 90 novae (exploding stars).

For about two thousand years, the Chinese used the North Star (which remains constant). The Chinese used that star to map the location of every other star in the sky.

This method of mapping stars is called the equatorial system. The West would not use this method to map the heavens for almost two thousand years after the Chinese invented it.

In early 1980s, a tomb was found at Xi Shui Po (西水坡) in Pu Yang, Henan Province. There were some clamshells and bones forming the images of the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger and the Northern Dipper.

It is believed that the tomb belongs to the Neolithic Age, about 6,000 years ago.

Star names relating to the 28 lunar mansions were found on oracle bones dating back to the Wuding Period (about 3,200 years ago). Source: New World Encyclopedia

See Shang Dynasty (1766 – 1122 B.C.)

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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China’s Fighting Singing Crickets

September 4, 2010

The first time I read about China’s singing crickets was in “Empress Orchid” by Anchee Min.  Retired concubines spent time carving gourds where these crickets lived to entertain empresses, emperors and princes.

I learned about China’s fighting critics from a comment on this Blog and there was a link included.  

While writing this post, I Googled the subject. In Gardening4us.com, Catherine Dougherty tells us, “cricket culture in China dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD).” 

She says, “It was during this time the crickets first became respected for their powerful ability to ‘sing’ and a cult formed to capture and cage them. And in the Sung Dynasty (960 – 1276 AD)… cricket fighting became popular.”

In TrueUp.net, Kim says, “The Chinese consider the cricket to be a metaphor for summer and courage…”

We learn from Pacific Pest Inc. that, “Crickets are popular pets and are considered good luck in some countries; in China, crickets are sometimes kept in cages, and various species of crickets are a part of people’s diets … and are considered delicacies of high cuisine in places like Mexico and China.”

From Home Made in China, we learn in a comment from Gogovivi, who is based in Qingdao, North China that, “Summer used to mean picking berries in the yard and making jam, canning green beans, going to the farmer’s market, BBQs, lawn mowing, hiking, swimming. Now my whole family looks forward to the arrival of singing crickets.”

See A Stylish Assault Against Pornography

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Chinese Brush Painting – Gongbi Style (flower and bird painting)

September 3, 2010

Chinese brush painting developed over a period of more than six thousand years.

Figure Painting developed beyond religious themes during the Song Dynasty (960-1127 AD), and landscape painting was established by the 4th century.

Another style is flower-and-bird painting, which became independent of other Chinese brush art around the 9th century then gradually developed into two different styles. Source: Asia Art.net

One famous 20th century Chinese brush-painting artist was Chen Zhifo (1895 – 1963)

Chen was born into an educated family.  At 23, he went to Japan to learn patterns that later influenced his painting style.

Chen would become a renowned painter in the early 20th century.

His artistic career started in design, patterns and other arts. When he started Gongbi style flower-and-bird painting, he was nearly 40, and he revived the declining tradition of Gongbi style Chinese brush painting.

When he started painting, he usually sketched his subjects then went through many drafts modifying them before applying colors.

Chen focused on the design of branches, leaves and birds to portray his subjects.

See Caressing Nature with Chinese Calligraphy

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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