For the first time in the 400 year history of the (Japanese) Geisha, a Westerner has been accepted, and on December 19, made her formal debut under the name Sayuki.
Geisha (芸者) are traditional female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance.
Chinese workers have made a huge drum, decorated with 480 lanterns in Dalian, Liaoning Province, China. The drum measures 6 metres in length and 4.8 metres in diameter, with Chinese word rat (鼠) embedded at the surface on both sides of the drum to celebrate the coming new year.
Chinese calendar is represented with 12 zodiac animals for every 12-year cycle in specific sequence - rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. Next year will be the year of rat (begins on Feb 7 on Chinese New Year to be precise).
In Chinese astrology, the 12 zodiac animals represent different character and luck for a person depending on his/her birth date and time. The months and hours of Chinese calendar are also categorized by the same group of animals in particular orders, but some formal terms would normally be used instead of the zodiac animals when referring to months or hours.
Kibasen (騎馬戦) is a traditional Japanese game played by Japanese school boys.
The basic of the game involved 4 players on each side, with 3 people (horse) carrying a rider on top. The teams would charge at each other, with the riders attempting to remove the hat (or headband) of the opposition rider and thus defeating the team.
Sometimes they would use 4 carriers instead of 3, especially for younger kids that probably need an extra person to carry the weight.
Read the rest of this post »
Surin Elephant Round-up is a festival normally held on the 3rd weekend of November in Surin province, Thailand.
The annual event was first held in 1960; it normally consists of a series of shows like football games and tugs of war etc. Although elephant is a national symbol of Thailand, I don’t think the festival carries much cultural value; it’s probably more for entertainment and tourism purposes.
CuJu (蹴鞠; literally means kick-ball) is an ancient Chinese sport similar to today’s football (soccer). The first recorded document about the game dated back 2300 years ago during the Warring States Period (256 BC-221 BC) in the Kingdom of Qi (齐国; now Shangdong Province).
The sport gone hiatus for a few decades during Qing Dynasty (221 BC–206 BC), and became popular during Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). The first emperor of Han was said to be a fan of CuJu, hence led to the development of the game.
The CuJu game during the Han Dynasty was similar to modern day’s football game. It was a physical (and skills) battle between 2 teams of 12 players (11 in modern days) to put the ball inside the goal post on the opponents end without using their hands.
The game took a massive change in Tang Dynasty (618–907). First, there was a huge breakthrough in the Ju (the ball)… the ball was made of animals’ bladder and was filled with air compared with stuffed-and-stitch hair and cloth in the old days.
The new ball was much lighter and bouncy, thus the rules of the game changed dramatically. Instead of having the goal post on the floor, the goal mouth was set hanging on air at the middle of the field. The players competed against each other to put the ball through the goal without the ball dropping on the floor… with no physical contact involved.
Some Chinese chess pieces made of pressed Pu’er tea leaves are shown at a tea shop in Suzhou, eastern China’s Jiangsu province on Tuesday (Oct 23)…
Pu’er (or Pu-erh) tea has been a popular drink in China for over thousand of years. Drinking Pu’er tea is purported to aid in digestion, reduce blood cholesterol and lipid levels. It is also widely believed in Chinese cultures that tea could counteract the unpleasant effects of heavy alcohol consumption.
US tennis star Venus Williams and Russian player Maria Kirilenko were dressed in Hanbok (traditional Korean dress) during the awards presentation ceremony at the Hansol Korea Open on September 30.
Williams is the champion after beating Kirilenko in the final. Besides the prize money, the champ was also presented with a Koryochungja, a vase made of Korean green porcelain.
A giant mooncake is baked in conjunction with a bakery food festival in Shenyang, China. The mooncake is weighed over 10 tonnes, has a surface of 52 square metres and is stuffed with 10 different stuffings.
Mooncake is a Chinese pastry traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (15th day of the 8th lunar month in Chinese calendar); a normal mooncake is around palm-size.
